


Host

by SocialMoth



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Aromantic Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Body Horror, Body Image, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Demisexual Hunk (Voltron), Don't copy to another site, F/M, Gay Keith (Voltron), Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt/Comfort, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I dared myself to write this and I definitely didn't win, M/M, Menstruation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mpreg, Original Character Death(s), Oviposition, Please Don't Hate Me, Space Uncle Coran (Voltron), Stillbirth, The Author Regrets Everything, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Trans Keith (Voltron), Trans Male Keith (Voltron), What Was I Thinking?, Whump, Why Did I Write This?, Xenophilia, biologically accurate cis mpreg (SORT OF), don't try to tell me they spent all that time in space and not one of them got alien/ass-pregnant, i fully expect to lose readers for this, it's a great time, it's just not realistic, keith is on his period and he has to help lance birth wasp alien larvae, leave your dignity at the door folks, listen, past pregnancy, seriously this is pretty gross, this is a fucking mess, this is a mess, what even is canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 09:53:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18333617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SocialMoth/pseuds/SocialMoth
Summary: It finally happened. Lancefinallylost his virginity to some hot alien babe (thank the ancients).Trouble is, Lancereallyshould have gotten a little less tipsy and paid a LOT more attention to what sort of hot alien babe he was about to give it to.(Or, the one where you'd think being genre-savvy would save Lance from a desperately awkward situation, but nope, here we are.)--This work is my intellectual property. I do not give you or anyone else permission to offer my works for download.





	Host

**Author's Note:**

> September 2018
> 
> Short version: Friendo started playing Sims 4 over the summer. I made up an excuse to write something disturbing and ran to the hills with it, and I probably shouldn't ever come back.
> 
> \--
> 
> I thought about posting this anonymously and then I was like, NO, tonight I die like a MAN. Whatever the fuck that means. Today it means owning the fact I wrote xenophilic buttpreg and am choosing to share it with the internet using my real face -- LUCKY YOU.
> 
> I intended this to be crack, for what it's worth -- but then it grew a plot that wanted to make sense and now I don't think I succeeded. :/
> 
> Heed the tags!! There are scenarios and language in this fic that might be uncomfortable or triggering to people with body image issues including eating disorders and dysphoria, on top of all the other problematic shit in here. Please be safe, friends. **This is definitely not for everyone, and I am not forcing anyone to read this.** That said please suggest other tags as needed; I did my best but I probably missed some things. D:
> 
> Also! I have no idea what part of canon this is meant to align with, as I literally wrote this during my lunch breaks as an escape from work bullshit so who knows where my brainspace was for most of that other than the obvious; soooooo rereading it I would say somewhere late/post-S2 where Shiro never disappeared? I guess?? I can't be arsed to fix anything because I like this as it is right now. :P
> 
> RIP me.

"You're back late," Pidge observed with feigned nonchalance as she sighted Lance in her peripheral vision. Void of shame, Lance grinned broadly and strutted past her to the coffee pot – or, well, what passed for coffee out here. None of them could pronounce the Altean word, anyway.

"Long night," he all but crowed, a self-satisfied flush of red high on his cheeks, "Needed a bit of a lie-in after that."

Pidge scowled, unimpressed. But good for him, she decided internally; Lance had spent more time champing at the bit than any of the rest could stand, so perhaps he would chill out a little now that he'd finally caught some (possibly literal) alien tail.

"He pole you that hard?" she cast out lightly, flicking the text on her screen out of sight to browse another reference article. Lance coughed into his mug and Pidge smirked to herself. She knew that affected gait anywhere, although her brother never admitted anything either.

" _S_ _he_ , had a lot more stamina than any human I've known," Lance boasted; as if his partner's resilience said anything about his own prowess in bed. Never mind that anyone possessing a nanogram of discerning brain matter could tell Lance hadn't known a single human biblically since his own mother gave birth to him. Whatever. Let him have his fun if it meant he finally got over his virgin angst.

Pidge wanted him to leave, so she decided to withhold any comments about this alien honey having any stamina at all in that case, at least until the timing was better.

Lance didn't leave. He leaned against the counter in his Altean leisure robe, eyes contentedly shut as he savored the smell of the sorta-coffee. More for him, Pidge thought, he seemed to actually _like_ the stuff – although everyone agreed it tasted better than nunville. The silence dragged on. With prickling annoyance Pidge realized Lance was fishing for a reason to tell more of his story – to practice it for later, or something. Probably.

Huffing through her nose, Pidge leaned back from the table. "Well, you gonna see her again?"

Lance gave a full-body wiggle that might have been endearing if one didn't know he was reminiscing about hot alien sex, possibly involving tentacles in unseemly places because this was _Lance_ and these were _aliens_.

His barely-concealed wince when he leaned his hips against the counter again told her more than she wanted to think about.

"Damn, I'd sure like to. How long are we staying parked here?"

Pidge shrugged, regretting that she'd said anything. "Ask Coran, or Hunk. I'm not sure either of them slept last night, though; you might not get a coherent answer."

Eyes slipping closed again as he seemed to relive the previous night for the umpteenth time in five minutes, Lance said lazily, "As long as we're here until tomorrow evening, I can make plans for tonight."

"Do you even remember her name?" Pidge deadpanned, conveying her complete lack of interest, let alone pride, in the conversation as well as she could. Blind as always to her sarcasm, Lance bristled.

"Mol. Well, that's what she said I could call her. She has two throats or something, so she makes multiple sounds at once when she's speaking anything that doesn't translate over." He took a sip of coffee to obscure his abrupt self-consciousness. Pidge hoped someone else would walk in now so she could change the subject gracefully. But Lance did it himself. "Whacha working on?"

Clearing her throat, Pidge flicked the display to a schematic of a Lion – looked like Yellow. "I figured, as long as we had a break, I could try to upgrade each of the Lions to utilize their individual specialties as well as make improvements across the board." Her enthusiasm dampened into a sudden frown. "It's not a one-size-fits-all approach. I think King Alfor basically made each Lion from scratch. They each have slightly different anatomy, so to speak; I have to go through their schematics one at a time, which is making this go much slower than I wanted – I'd hoped to code a patch of some kind that would have worked for all the Lions before we needed to go into the field again."

Lance hummed sympathetically, rolling his mug across his chin in thought. Hunk would be the better person to talk to about this, he reminded himself – _he_ was the mechanical genius. "Do the Lions _need_ any of it?" he thought aloud, "The worst that seems to happen is they lose power when they're overloaded; otherwise they're pretty solid, if you ask me."

Pidge bobbed her head to the side in agreement. "I'm looking more for things like boosting shields, increasing the range of their weapons' effectiveness, maybe tweaking their autopilot sensors so they can battle independently if we need to be on the ground. That sort of thing.

Why the Paladins would go to the ground when the situation called for the Lions and Voltron, Lance didn't want to ask for an example. Let Pidge have her gremlin fun, Lance had dinner plans to make. He carried his mug with him out of the kitchen, pulling out his phone as he went. Mol had given her comm code before he left earlier that morning, but he waited until he was out of earshot of Pidge to call.

Her away message was brief and strictly business; Lance had no qualms leaving a voicemail. "Hey, Mol, it's Lance. It looks like I'm gonna be here tonight, too, so I was wondering if you'd be interested in a, uh, _repeat performance_ of last night? Just let me know when, I don't have any other plans today. See you later." He just stopped himself from blowing a kiss into the receiver, which turned out to be just as well when he happened practically on top of Keith as they rounded a blind corner at the same time.

"Watch it," Keith snapped, hissing as he deflected away from Lance, making the other boy stumble back a few steps. His eyes slitted in irritation; they looked dull and darker than usual, his face ashen.

"Sorry, Keith," Lance said emphatically after he saw how Keith guarded his lower abdomen. Keith grimaced at how easily he'd given himself away, but his snarl prevented Lance from saying anything more specific. He wasn't having any of it, today, that much was abundantly clear. Daring a quick nod of understanding, Lance skittered around Keith and past him, down the hall to his bedroom. Despite the coffee, it had still indeed been a late night, and exhaustion suddenly pulled on his eyelids. Lance felt he might sink into a cozy puddle on the floor if he didn't manage to fall into his bed first. After shoving off his shoes and jeans, the last salient thought he had before slipping into unconsciousness was how much he looked forward to seeing Mol again tonight.

Several hours had passed when Lance woke up again, a low pang in his stomach rousing him from a deep sleep. Rubbing his eyes, he checked his phone. Coming up on the late afternoon hours now, and no response from Mol. Did she have anything like a job? She must have been too busy all day to call back, in any case, because surely she would have seen his voicemail by now. And she had seemed _very_ pleased by their night together.

Well, the night was still young – and so was Lance, as his stomach rumbled insistently to remind him that he was indeed still a growing boy. Bone-deep hunger seized him all at once and he rolled over to slip out of the covers, blankets tangling between his bare legs and causing him to stumble a little on the way up, with an exasperated chuckle.

After shrugging his robe off, he checked his phone again. Still nothing. Lance turned the ringer on full and set it down on his pillow while he gathered some clothes. Stripping off the previous day's shirt, he shook out his jeans and stepped into them, hiking them up his hips and zipping them with a little bit of fumbling – but almost completely unable to button them. Lance frowned, glancing down at his waistband. He didn't need to stare at the garment for two minutes to figure out if Coran hadn't accidentally given him any of Keith's clothes after doing the laundry, but he ensured the jeans hit his feet as they always had and skimmed his legs as usual. But suddenly his unfailingly skinny waist had become too big to close them in the front.

Lance's frown deepened, brow knitting. Maybe that food goo had more calories than it tasted like. He'd certainly been more active than ever with the rigorous conditioning exercises Allura cycled them through, and his appetite had skyrocketed to keep up. He palmed his belly, feeling for squishy pudge; he might have overcompensated a little… But his belly felt firm, if not more rock-solid than his abs had finally become only recently.

Maybe that was just it, he concluded, relief making him giddy. Lance wasn't getting fat, he was getting more muscular – and about damn time. He was past done with being the twiggiest of the Paladins and shopping for pants in the boys' section.

To that end – all of Lance's pants were now too snug for him, or would be shortly. But it wasn't like he could borrow something from anyone else here. The only one close to his size was Keith, and even Keith's favored leggings would still be comically short.

Huffing through his nose, Lance glanced back at the discarded pajama pants on the foot of his bed, and the continued absence of any response from Mol on his depressingly blank phone screen. Could he get away with coming to dinner in, basically, sweatpants? They were essentially on a break anyway, right? Yeah, he could do that; and maybe tomorrow he could hit the shops to try to find some new clothes.

"Alright, then," he said to himself as he shucked off his now-undersized jeans and pitched them back to his drawers, pulling the pajama pants on and re-donning his shirt, retying his Altean robe over it. "Sorry, Mol." No way he could meet her for a second date in these clothes even if he _had_ made it unmistakably clear what activity – singular, and clothing unnecessary – he wanted to partake in with her. As a Paladin of Voltron, surely _some_ measure of decorum was expected here, even if he had to admit in his darkest of hearts that Mol was basically only a booty call… Quiznak it, he decided, huffing again. Everyone else could think what they wanted, _something_ was better than nothing _ever_.

Conveniently enough for Lance, no one else had anything to say about his choice of leisure clothing for the greater part of the day. In fact, everyone seemed inclined to take things super easy, and even Keith had forgone his binder since that morning, if the overlarge shirt (obviously Shiro's) swathing his comparatively tiny frame indicated anything.

Or, more likely, perhaps Shiro had made him take the binder off and then gave him a shirt five sizes too big all in the same minute. Surly but not as pale as earlier, Keith curled up beside Pidge with a heat pad hugged to his belly, watching quietly over her shoulder as she talked him through a list of possible upgrades for Red.

The pit of Lance's stomach twinged in sympathy. Keith still looked miserable, and like he could only barely manage to focus on what Pidge was saying, brow knotting more tightly with each pulsing cramp. Lance made yet another mental note to keep eyes and ears out for anything they could possibly sub for his testosterone out here. Pidge seemed able to manage her cycle, but Keith effectively needed to call in sick two or three days at a time, and he became less effective on missions the times he absolutely couldn't stay behind.

Filing the note away with at least a dozen others, Lance strode past Hunk just as his stomach gave a hearty roar. Bursting into laughter as Lance flushed bright red up to his ears, the Yellow Paladin put his book aside and stretched before rolling to his feet.

"I figured you'd be hungry; no one's seen you leave your room all day."

"That's cos I haven't," Lance replied good-naturedly, rubbing his still-growling stomach as if he could silence the impatient organ. "Anything left from lunch?" He couldn't smell anything to indicate dinner in progress.

"I can fix you something to tide you over until dinner," Hunk offered easily, linking his fingers behind his back and arching until his shoulders popped. "Anyone else want something, while I'm at it? Keith, you good?"

Ah, right; part of Keith's sluggishness during this time came from the concerning fact he ate practically nothing during the first days of his period, on top of eating like a bird the rest of the time if he remembered to eat at all. The boy rose to the surface just long enough to shake his head, then collapsed back against the couch to gaze blankly at Pidge's monitor.

Lips pursing, Hunk didn't nag, merely swaying into the kitchen with Lance in step, still attempting to quiet his stomach with his palms massaging under his ribs.

"She burned you out pretty good, huh?" Hunk teased with a cocked eyebrow as he glanced over his shoulder at the loudest rumble yet. "What was her name, again?"

"She said 'Mol' was close enough." A shameless grin split across Lance's face – he was only too happy to brag. "It was a _good_ night." He remembered his empty inbox and his mouth twitched toward a frown. Hunk – empathetic, observant Hunk – noticed his faltering.

"Everything okay?"

Scoffing at himself – it seemed ridiculous to say out loud that _he_ had been ghosted by _her_ , especially as it had to be way too early to make that sort of call – Lance forced some renewed cheer and shook his head. "Peachy," he chirped. "Whacha got there?"

Raising both eyebrows at the evasion, and too taken by it to tease Lance even further about his virginal modesty or some such, Hunk tactfully spun in place to what he'd gathered out of the fridge on autopilot.

"Well, I don't know what you're in the mood for. But I was thinking I could throw together some soup so you at least have something until I get dinner ready."

 _And maybe also coax something warm into Keith's belly_ , Lance mentally concluded. Hunk literally only offered soup when someone was sick – and as he'd stubbornly put to Keith himself, hemorrhaging out of your bits was a kind of sick, _especially_ if he felt too nauseated to eat anything solid because of it.

"Soup sounds good, if you don't mind making enough for one person plus a rat." Hunk rolled his eyes.

"Don't be mean; believe it or not, Keith eats enough when it's _my_ cooking." Hunk turned now toward the cutting board, dumping vegetation on the counter. "Don't make faces at me, either," he said immediately after Lance silently mocked his words back at him. Reappearing out of a cupboard with a colander, Hunk started rinsing the vegetables, now looking thoughtful rather than annoyed. "You sure everything's okay, dude? Mol?"

Heaving a sigh – Hunk would have managed to drag it out of him even if Lance wasn't a bit of an ass about it to start things off – the Blue Paladin let his shoulders slump as he leaned back against the opposite counter, arms folded across his chest.

"Haven't heard from her," Lance admitted, chin tucked toward his chest. He saw Hunk's self-affirming nod in his peripheral vision. "I thought she had a really good time. She said it – _I_ – was perfect. Exactly what she needed."

"And she hasn't contacted you?"

Lance winced, fingers tightening on his arms. "I left her a message this morning. Nothing back yet."

Hunk didn't particularly care for others' escapades, but unlike Pidge he willingly acknowledged how important this sort of thing felt to Lance. "It's not even been a whole day, Lance. I don't think it's time to panic."

Lance scrubbed his face, covering his eyes. "I'm not panicking."

"You are," Hunk insisted gently, "You talk really slowly when you're upset." Well, that was true. The kitchen began filling with the aroma of cut and cooking vegetables as Hunk added them to the pot. "You'll feel much better after you eat," he said with a comforting lightness, offset by raucous giggling as Lance's stomach emitted a shocking noise loud enough to make his whole body quake.

–

Pidge had left him a stack of schematics and tidily written ( _and_ color-coordinated) notes to look over. As the evening stretched on and it became apparent that Lance would go nowhere that night, the Green Paladin seized the opportunity to share the load of utilizing the Lions' capabilities to their fullest potential.

"It's easy enough for _me_ to go ahead and put all this in," she'd explained when Lance protested the promised hours poring over her small handwriting, "but it completely defeats the purpose if it doesn't work with how you pilot Blue. Each of our Lions has a different schematic, so I would think each one handles differently." Lance had shrugged at that; it made sense, anyway. He believed he could adapt to anything Pidge threw at him – he was the Tailor, after all – but she'd worked on this all day and it wasn't like Lance had anything else to do.

So, now he lounged in his favorite chair in the common room with a hot mug of space tea, eyelids gradually growing heavier as Pidge's notes ( _impossibly_ neat, how could any genius's penmanship be so _neat_?), so painstakingly thorough even an idiot (or a Lance, he sniffed) could follow them, all blurred together in his vision. No way he'd get through this without falling asleep first, but he'd at least made it far enough in to get the gist of Pidge's ideas. He could go over them again tomorrow when he felt more awake, and probably less dejected. Shuffling the papers back into a neat stack, Lance checked his phone one last time. Still no messages from Mol. Where had she gone, today?

Sighing, Lance turned the screen off and put the papers aside, full-body stretching as he readied himself for the trek to bed after drinking the rest of his tea. He winced at full extension, the ache he'd felt in his lower back most of the afternoon suddenly fanning through his abdomen.

His stomach gurgled. Lance scowled at it. Apparently the full seconds he'd taken at dinner (after finishing the entire batch of soup Hunk made when Keith, upon taking one step into the kitchen, had turned green and bolted down the hall out of sight for the rest of the day) still hadn't sated his hunger.

"You get the rest of this tea, and that's it," he said sourly. Call him shallow, or a diva, or whatever; Lance did not take kindly to the thought of what might happen should he keep trying to assuage this gnawing, empty feeling. _Just_ a feeling, he told himself. He'd drank a lot with Mol. He was just severely dehydrated. That was all this was. He'd drink an additional glass of water when he took his mug back to the kitchen, and just accept that he would be up in the middle of the night to pee because of it.

The water did not help. If anything Lance only felt more ravenously hungry after that, his fancies drifting to the dinner leftovers, the starchy veggie hash loaded with buttery sauce, thick gravy for the Alrusian fowl, and a sinfully indulgent, sweet, whipped dessert that had the texture of mousse and tasted vaguely like salted caramel. Long story short, after chugging two large glassfuls of water, Lance suddenly found himself locking his bedroom door behind him and sliding to the floor with a heaping plate of leftovers – all of the _good_ stuff, the sorts of things Abuela would swat his wrist reaching for instead of having more meat or green vegetables first. This wouldn't help his figure, a tiny rational voice shrieked, but still the compulsion to quell that _painful_ emptiness if only for a few minutes drowned it out. Lance shoveled the cold food into his mouth like he hadn't eaten in two years, aware that he chewed and swallowed it down into his already well-fed stomach but never quite reaching that choke point, the moment when his belly would begin to jut out uncomfortably under his ribs and swallowing became a full-body process, food losing its taste the longer he ignored the stretched feeling over his waistline. Instead he only suffered the urge to _eat_ , take larger bites, swallow them down nearly whole. His throat hurt from the effort before his stomach did, and even when he'd finished the plate having easily consumed enough for two or three sittings in what felt like only minutes, gasping for breath, he craved _more_.

On the verge of mortified tears, Lance put the sparkling clean plate aside on the floor and stared in dismay at the ceiling. He… how on earth could he _still_ feel so _empty_? Even as his digestive tract churned around the astonishing amount of food he'd just wolfed down, every level of his consciousness still cried out that it wasn't enough. "Oh my god," Lance whimpered, as a tentative stroke over his belly yielded that telling firmness under his sternum, yet, to his incomprehension, no significant change in overall size. A glance down his persistently lithe body confirmed it. Save the slight bulk he'd discovered earlier, he looked as frustratingly skinny as he always had. His blood chilled, in equal parts relief and distress. He should look bloated. Fuck, he should look _pregnant_ , after all of that. He should be one sudden move from either bursting or ralphing every little thing onto his shirt.

How…?

He hiccuped. Something settled lower in his abdomen, gas bubbling around it with no feeling of urgency. Lance waited, breath shallow, palm splayed over his aching gut.

" _Please_ ," he whimpered out loud, unable to take the thought of eating any more.

And then another gas bubble rippled in his stomach, traveling upward until Lance had to stifle a wet belch in his sweat-glazed palm.

Any terror he was indeed about to hurl everything he'd consumed that day quickly dissipated as he realized with sudden incalculable relief that as if by magic, Lance all of a sudden no longer felt hungry. A tear dripped from his eye as he now had to suppress hysterical laughter, bone-tired and only too happy to abide the consequences of this gastronomic debauchery if only his greedy stomach would finally – _finally_ – let him be.

Firmly putting such repercussions out of his thoughts for now, Lance braced himself on the door to get to his feet, hand instinctively holding his undeniably full belly, although inexplicably he now felt like he'd only had a reasonable portion, nothing close to a meal for three. Although the painful twinge in his back had doubled, no doubt protesting his time on the floor.

"Just let me have this," he scolded his anxious second-thoughts, only wanting to fall into bed and sleep deeply until morning. Still, he couldn't bring himself to strip off his two-day-old shirt, unwilling to risk even an incidental glance at his body, what he might have done to himself. He hoped things would look better in the morning. God, he hoped it'd be better in the morning.

–

Something felt wrong.

More than the persistent hunger and clawing emptiness that rang into his bones, Lance _hurt_. His eyelids seemed to weigh several pounds each, and it was a Herculean task to force them open, to blink foggily at the dull grey ceiling above him. Mote by mote he recognized the remainder of his body, his limbs sprawling the width of the bunk, one arm flopping at an odd angle over the edge of the mattress. His fingers felt slow when he flexed them, his elbow agonizingly stiff from the hours of full extension. His knee on the same side fared better, although his thigh twinged at a new bruise from the bunk edge. His foot was cold. Groaning, Lance drew his exposed leg and arm back under the blanket, rolling onto his side to face the back wall of his sleeping alcove. God, even that languid movement was a chore, his body heavy with an exhaustion he couldn't fathom. Once settled, Lance heaved a breath, catching the faint traces of his usual sleeping masque, which he mentally kicked himself for neglecting these past couple of nights. Not like he had the energy to scrub it off his face at the moment even if he had remembered it.

What time even was it… It wasn't _that_ late when Lance finally went to bed…

Cursing his stomach for choosing that exact moment to throttle itself around its own emptiness, Lance groped behind his head for his phone. It was barely time for any reasonable human (besides maybe Shiro) to be awake, much less starving. Cursing again, Lance threw himself onto his back, free hand flattening over his tingling ribs.

Another ravenous growl.

"Shut up," Lance hissed, dragging his hand down his front.

Something felt wrong.

Freezing in place, Lance centered his attention on the shape under his palm. The very round shape. Definitely on his belly. Definitely not a mound of his blanket.

Inhaling to steel himself, Lance pressed his hand down. He felt resistance from that shape curling down to his hips.

Definitely _in_ his belly.

_What the hell?_

Every ministration of his hand atop the covers echoed itself on the plane of his abdomen. Except what his hand felt resembled anything but the obnoxiously flat surface of his stomach that he'd resigned himself to. This… this rose up. In a firm, rounded mass above his pelvis, solid and immovable under his trembling hand. And it _hurt_.

"Oh my god," he whimpered, finding it hard to swallow between the urge to vomit and the impulse to yell out fighting for dominance. His breath came faster, shallow, hands now roving on top of the covers, feeling out the shape, the sheer size of it. It spanned the width of his narrow hips, and reached up from his groin to his chest, sloping to join at his sternum in an alarmingly swollen teardrop shape. "Oh my god," he whined again, scrambling with mortifying difficulty to push himself up to sitting, only making it to his elbows before vertigo and nausea overtook him, which was better than acknowledging the part his firmly domed belly played in limiting his movements. Swathed by the covers, his stomach was barely there. Swallowing thickly, Lance fisted the corner of his sheets and ripped them away, baring his horrifyingly engorged belly in full relief.

"Holy _shit_ ," he rasped, tears springing to his eyes as terror gripped him. In a grotesque curiosity he palmed and palpated his stomach, trying to discern anything he could, but unable to draw any knowledgeable conclusions on his own. It felt disturbingly solid, the skin hot and hypersensitive to his touch; he couldn't get anything to shift under his skin, nothing to indicate if it was gas or food – the only explanations he could think of.

For fuck's sake, he didn't even have to _go_ , when all past experience screamed he should be rushing to the bathroom right this second, any way to ease the obscene pressure in his overloaded system.

How the fuck could he possibly feel this _hungry_ , when not merely his stomach but also his intestines had been packed to the brim, with no immediate relief in sight?

A fatter tear slipped down Lance's cheek with a hiccuping sob. This was permanent. He'd done this to himself. He'd let himself be greedy and now he couldn't even feign ignorance if anyone wanted to know where last night's leftovers had gone. Everyone would know the instant they looked at him.

 _Calm down, McClain_ , Lance scolded himself through another wave of tears, _It's not hopeless_. As long as they were off-duty, as long as he could get away with slouching lounge pants and a billowy leisure robe, he had time to figure this out.

A new blessed determination flooded his veins and through sheer effort he managed to right himself and get out of bed. He ignored the twinge down his spine as the new weight settled on his frame. It felt heavier standing up, but some of it seemed to redistribute along his torso at his full height, and to his tremendous relief when he checked his profile in the mirror, his lower belly didn't actually seem to protrude _as_ much if he minded his posture just right, and sucked in a little.

 _Okay, then_ , he reassured himself, a small hopeful smile brightening his features despite his anxiety, _things aren't so bad, after all_. Now if he watched his appetite and kept under the radar with the others, things should go back to normal in no time at all, with no one else the wiser.

With his robe tied strategically, indeed, one could barely tell Lance's shape had altered. With more confidence he could handle this on his own and remedy the situation with his image intact, Lance strode out of his room toward the common area, intending to nurse a mug of space coffee while reviewing Pidge's notes a second time, with hopefully not too long to wait until enough people were up to warrant breakfast.

The universe, as it so often did, had entirely different plans. Just as Lance reached the kitchen the distress beacon alert screamed through the castle, making Lance jump in alarm and pull a muscle in his groin with how abruptly he spun to dart back to his room and get into his uniform.

 _Shit shit shit_ , he seethed as he bolted down the hall, robe tail streaming behind him and slowing him to a frustrating sort of loping pace – or he blamed the robe rather than his abrupt weight gain, the throbbing mass in his belly throwing his center of gravity and shifting his balance on corners faster than he knew how to compensate.

 _Fuck_. He realized when he reached his room, that if they needed to go to the ground he wouldn't be able to move as quickly. They were already down Keith, they couldn't afford for him to be a liability.

The alert rang shrilly in his bedroom. Growling in distress Lance shook his head furiously at himself and lunged for his closet, yanking out the bodysuit with one hand and pulling out pieces of his armor with the other.

At least he knew the suits offered enough compression, he wouldn't look so obviously bloated. Once the Lycra-like material was pulled over his body, his abdomen barely had any presence. With the utility belt breaking up his silhouette, it was almost undetectable.

Good. Lance took no time in latching on his armor, and with his bayard in hand he joined the rush toward the hangars, Allura's voice over the intercom promising details once they all had launched.

" _Umf!_ " The landing in the cockpit was a little harder than Lance was used to, and he took a second to massage his tailbone while Blue powered up. "Online!" he yelped when he realized the role call was waiting on him.

"You okay, Lance?" Shiro confirmed over the comm link.

"I'm good. Still waking up," Lance grit his teeth on the white lie, but no one questioned it. And then they were in the air.

"The distress call is too unstable to have come from a planet," Coran supplemented between Allura's instructions. "However, our radar did triangulate the signal to somewhere within the Pylat system, which happens to host a multitude of military posts and research facilities under protection."

"Any chance they'll let us see some of their work?" Pidge thought aloud, interest clearly piqued. Lance rolled his eyes.

"I'm pretty sure military-sanctioned research is always classified, Pidge," Hunk put in gently. She groaned in disappointment and Lance grinned.

"Maybe they'd let the Paladins of Voltron, who saved their butts, have a special sneak preview," he fed into the comm, halfway teasing but also wanting to boost her spirits.

"Being a Paladin isn't a free pass and you know it, Lance," Keith said flatly, "Let's just do our jobs and get back home."

No one wanted to argue with Keith on his period. Rolling his eyes again, Lance nonetheless gave him the last word and refocused toward piloting Blue and the mission at hand. From Allura's stream of details as they approached it sounded like they might leave the Lions for infiltration on foot.

Lance's stomach hitched painfully and his heart thudded in his chest. He was their sharpshooter – he'd be stationed away from the thick of it, if they could manage. But if he had to fight…

Another roiling pang in his belly made him shift in his seat, trying to find a comfortable position. Did he feel heavy now from dread, or from the abhorrent amount of food stuck in his system? Sweat beaded in his hairline.

Focus, he tried to tell himself even as a shaking hand flattened over his bloated gut – mercifully restrained by the suit and additional sucking in, although the stabbing tightness grew harder to bear the longer he wore it. This was a simple rescue mission, in and out and done. Shouldn't take that long, shouldn't be that strenuous. He could deal with everything else later.

For all the self-talk Lance played over in his head, they arrived at the origin of the distress beacon all too soon, and before he'd fully acknowledged the fact Lance was jetting away from the safety of Blue, feeling dizzy with how quickly his heart pounded. He couldn't breathe as deeply as he needed to.

Keith and Shiro cast concerned glances at him in turn – he could feel he'd gone a bit pale – but neither of them said anything, focusing on the mission and the team's morale instead. Good. He readied his bayard upon landing, following the floor plan Pidge had somehow gotten hold of to find ideal sniping spots inside the research base.

Galra scouts had infiltrated in search of some biological weapon. The scientists on base had secured themselves in a containment room, presumably with the weapon in question, but the facility was effectively on lockdown and the military bases nearby had suffered damage to their own transportation – a multi-fronted Galra attack.

From the sound of things, it was a miracle the signal had reached the Castle of Lions, let alone that the Paladins made it in. Outside of the Lions, they were probably too small to detect.

Lance ducked into the entrance Shiro had carved out with his cyborg arm, on the heels of Pidge and Hunk. His gut and lungs protested the crouched posture he ran in but he grit his teeth against the piercing ache and stayed low. Keith panted behind him, vertigo and the cramped space taxing his normally catlike, silent stride. Shiro brought up the rear, slower due to his bulk and also to ensure no one snuck up behind the team.

"Here," Pidge whispered, pointing ahead per whatever she was able to discern from the hologram projection above her arm guard. "Down that way should be the panic room." Turning on the spot, she flung her arm in another direction. "I'm picking up other life signs that way. My guess is the Galra scouts plus some reinforcements."

"I'll get the hostages," Hunk volunteered. Pidge nodded, leaning to join him.

"We'll handle the Galra, then," Shiro affirmed, beckoning Lance to follow as Keith had already turned in step.

"Give us a shout if you need help," Pidge said, "We'll do the same if anyone's injured."

Ensuring they could all contact each other, the Paladins split. Lance managed to overtake Keith, reaching the doorway and darting to the first hiding spot with several yards between them.

As he often did, Keith barreled into the room and pounced with a roar, taking down two soldiers before the rest of the room understood what was happening. Shiro followed with his arm aglow, a violet streak as he slashed at charging scouts.

Lance perched his bayard on his shoulder, sighting each remaining Galra in the room. He took out a couple by the data projectors and one two paces from getting the jump on Keith as he dueled with three others, when throbbing pain exploded in his lower pelvis. His agonized cry spoiled his location, and a Galra that had run in from elsewhere at the commotion seized the chance to ambush him, dragging him by the nape into the center of the room with a sword to his throat.

"Paladins of Voltron!" he bellowed, yanking Lance up until only his toes barely touched the ground, "Drop your weapons!"

Lance quavered in the burly Galra's grasp – flashbacks of Sendak playing before his eyes – and he choked on a desperate sob for air as he watched Shiro's arm blink out, Keith retracting his sword with an arm guarding his other shoulder.

Terror drove nausea up Lance's throat but he dared not succumb. Any movement at all could be his last.

"You don't know what you're messing with, here," Shiro said evenly, always the reasoning approach first, "No one knows what this weapon is, or what it could do. You could be putting the entire universe at risk, including your empire."

The Galra holding Lance scrunched his nose haughtily, as if Shiro was so naive. "It is nevertheless a risk to our empire, and so better it is in Galra hands than those who would seek to use it against us."

Lance could name at least three or four movies where biological warfare horrifically backfired, but even if he could speak right now he never would have dared voice it. His stomach turned to ice and he convulsed. The sword edge pressed into the suit material at his throat and he felt it split open. His skin would be next.

"If this was any danger to you, it would have been used by now," Keith countered – totally a bluff, Lance would say. But the Galra seemed to actually consider that, and subsequently reject it as he tightened his grip on Lance. God, he wished he could at least put his feet on the floor…

"Or given to you for safe-guarding?" the Galra tested. Keith's eyes flashed but Shiro remained remarkably calm and stony-faced. Despite the dire situation a pang of awe washed over Lance – this, this was the Shiro he'd grown up idolizing.

"Breaking into this facility endangers the research. No one can use any weapon developed here if we don't understand it," Shiro reasoned, a darker edge to his voice now. A different kind of chill ran down Lance's spine.

"Voltron will not have it!" the Galra screeched, shoving Lance hard to the ground before charging Shiro and Keith, blade poised to swing at Shiro's heart.

"No!" Lance cried out as someone yelled "Get away from him!" – physically unable to ready his blaster in time – and a shrill clang reverberated around the room, loud enough to put Lance's teeth on edge. Shiro stood, barely moved except a step back to block the attack. Keith – so small, almost comically, between them – had reacted even faster than Shiro and in a flash made it across the room with his sword up, crossed in front of his enraged face with the Galra's own blade.

"Back. Off." Keith snarled, eyes blazing and teeth bared. He had surprise on his side as he seemed to effortlessly push the Galra away, recovering his stance and whipping his sword point across the soldier's woefully exposed throat quicker than Lance could blink. Dark blood sprayed over Keith's face as the Galra reeled back and went down, screams twisted into muddled choking as his life force drained out of him.

"Holy shit," Lance squeaked, still on the ground. His aching stomach churned, heaved, and then he vomited on the floor between his hands, coughing on all fours at the putrid taste.

Unfazed, Keith ignored his squeamish response and turned to survey the room. "Anyone else?" he challenged, sword gleaming through the purple-black ooze dripping toward the hilt. None of the Galra moved. One took their knee in surrender, and the rest followed. Only scouts. Primed, but not trained for fatal combat. "Glory or death" seemed not to matter here.

"Everyone's out," Pidge's tinny voice sparked over Lance's headset. "A few minor injuries. They assure me the weapon is still safely hidden."

"Where is it?" Lance asked, spitting out the last of the bile in his mouth.

"Said we would already know if it'd been compromised," Hunk responded, sounding resigned to having their curiosity unsatisfied. Lance couldn't decide if that reassured him or not, but it seemed good enough for Shiro as he promptly nudged Keith's shoulder to start moving out.

"Come on over, Allura. Let's get these guys out of here," he said, looking around the remaining Galra. Some of them looked far too young to be here.

–

Blue's spirit nudged at his mind when he returned safely inside her cockpit and took the controls again.

 _[Okay?]_ she kept prodding, wary concern clear as day yet intangible – as always, Lance just _knew_ rather than hearing or exactly feeling.

"Yeah, baby girl, I'm okay," he said tiredly.

Irritation now; she was chiding his machismo.

"Okay, things kinda sucked in there. But I'm alright, I promise."

Blue didn't feel like she believed him, but she let him pilot her back into her hangar, only expressing due trepidation about him leaving her care when the increasing ache in his belly – now occupying all of his senses with no mission at hand to distract him – left him sweating by the time she could power down.

Once settled, Lance unbuckled, but he remained in place to give the rest of the Paladins a head start out of the hangars to… wherever. He wanted nothing more than to get out of this suit and lie down, undisturbed until his gut figured its quiznakking life out. Just another minute, he told himself, rubbing at his sore belly where it pinched and bubbled in tandem, nausea hinting in the pit of his stomach again. He hadn't eaten since… There shouldn't be anything to throw up anymore. It should all be making its trundling way toward the other end.

But it wasn't. Fuck if he'd say it out loud, but Lance didn't even need to _fart_. _That_ should have worried him more than anything else, because at least then he'd know that his digestive system was _trying_ to move things along.

 _Fuck_ , he silently cursed again as pain lashed over his back and sides, something heavy-feeling straining between his hips for relief.

Suit. Off. He needed to get out of this suit. The others _had_ to have had enough time.

Bracing himself, Lance dropped from the Lion's mouth and made as quickly as he could for his dorm, sharp cramps in random quadrants of his lower abdomen causing him to stumble and then hobble along the way as he found it more painful to stay upright. In spite of this he managed an even pace, making it at last to his door before the exertion tipped over the edge of Too Much and the first breathless sob burst from his throat before he had a chance to stop it.

"Lance, that you?"

 _Shit_. Lance didn't grace the speaker with a glance toward the source of the voice but he saw Red Paladin armor and a shock of black hair turning the near corner before he practically tumbled into his quarters, locking the door behind his seizing form via muscle memory alone and then smacking against it, knees shaking almost too violently to hold him up. The thick metal deafened Keith's urgent knocks.

"Lance, are you okay in there?"

Could he pretend not to hear?

Keith bashed his fist on the door again. " _Lance!_ "

"I'm fine!" Lance yelped right as pain knifed through his belly again, his hands grappling for the zip at the back of his neck. _Out, out, out, needed to get out_ –-

"Don't bullshit me, you're hurt."

Growling under his breath, Lance shed the plates and his body suit in the same movements, peeling the fabric under what used to be his waistline, deliberately not looking down. He'd accidentally brushed his thumb over the swollen heaviness of his gut – he didn't want to confirm his fear that it had indeed grown larger. The weight pulling on his hips did enough for that.

"It's nothing. I'll be okay. Just need… need to rest."

Silence stretched so long Lance hoped Keith had given up and left – why the fuck did he even _care_?

"Well, I guess…" God, he could imagine how awkward Keith seemed through the door. His bewildered half-shrug, glancing down at his hand to avoid holding eye contact, brows disappearing under his overgrown fringe as he stammered for the right words. "You… Just… if you need something." Now Lance heard the scattered footfalls of Keith, overcome by self-reproach, rushing away to soothe his jeopardized pride in solitude. It would be almost cute, if he wasn't such a jackass the rest of the time. Almost.

Sighing through his nose, Lance double-checked the lock. Then he swallowed any saliva he might choke on, and turned his eyes downward.

He coughed in shock anyway.

He thought he'd felt big that morning. Now he _looked_ obscenely _huge_. His belly sloped out in front of him, heavy and distressingly full, an uncomfortably tight sensation permeating his gut even as his hands roved over it in a sorry attempt to ease the pain.

"Oh my god." The three-word phrase cycled over in his head. This wasn't right. Something should have happened. _Anything_ to let him keep the illusion that he'd simply eaten too much and his digestion was sluggish because he was stressed out and that was all--

Something _moved_.

Not the undulation that he occasionally felt with normal peristalsis. No, something _pushed_ against the smooth muscle for a dragging second, then relented. A cold sweat broke over him when he felt it again, more aggressively, in another region of his ballooning gut. The little pushes occurred sporadically long after he should have accepted the horrifying reality: something was _growing_ inside of him. _Multiple_ somethings.

" _Oh my god_ ," he whined, a string of Spanish oaths and prayers falling out of his mouth to match the fat mortified tears streaming down his face. His fists balled up on either side of his jaw. He couldn't touch his stomach anymore. He wouldn't.

No one could know.

Skin rippled along his side. Something in him stretching out, then curling up again.

 _Pregnant_.

His blood chilled and goosebumps stood over his bare skin, and he gazed in mute terror at the swollen flesh before him as it shifted and twitched with the most transient movements of the… of the unborn.

No, it was impossible. He'd only had sex the once, with a _wasp alien_. He was a _boy_. This _had_ to really be something else, maybe something he ate; those canapés Mol shared with him had looked suspicious--

An urgent knocking at his door, again. Lance froze, tearful litany of denials and prayers caught midstream in his throat.

"Lance, we're meeting now in the briefing room." Shiro. Not Keith. Lance's heart quickened and he stared down at his gravid stomach. He couldn't go out like this!

"Okay!" he squeaked obediently, gnashing his teeth down on mentally cursing himself for his stupid hero worship.

"Lance?" Damn it, could people just assume he was okay and leave him alone like they always did?!?

"I'm good, I'm coming, just… give me a minute." Lance could have slapped himself. That sounded too much like the time Marco called him to dinner in the middle of his first time jerking off.

_Please don't let my quiznakking personal hero think I get my rocks off on rescue missions, of all things…_

But Shiro said nothing, heavy footfalls moving away from the door.

Lance felt he was beginning to see why he could manage to tolerate Keith _sometimes…_ Never mind.

Swallowing, he considered his shape again. No way he could let them see…

But his suit. It would hurt – oh god, it would be _miserable_ – but it would hold everything in, keep it all hidden. He hoped. Looking at his belly now it seemed impossible.

He had no choice.

–

If at least one other person still had their uniform on, it would have been better. But now, everyone else had taken to their civilian clothes and so Lance stood out more than he thought he would have if he'd gone into the meeting with his grossly expanded stomach on full display. As it was, the control panel in the front of his suit only just managed to pull the swollen mound in, at the cost of whatever had taken solid root inside him pushing back at least two-fold on his other organs, including his diaphragm and lungs. Each breath required every effort not to whimper in the exertion, sweat glazing his forehead as he shook minutely in constant pain.

If anyone had a thought, no one said anything to interrupt Allura's status report on the Castle, the nearby universe, and whatever else the agenda covered today. Wincing with every flexion of his spine, Lance lowered himself in his usual seat between Hunk and Keith, fists tight in his lap to keep himself from screaming.

Keith kept glancing at him out the corner of his eyes. Lance stubbornly ignored him.

Some of the conversation got too technical for Lance to follow in his current state, but the gist of it was they would need to change their location within the next quintet. Any longer and they risked discovery or betrayal to Galra outposts, not to mention a strike on their innocent allies planet-side.

Lance flinched and his mouth dropped open to speak before he could damper the reaction. He managed not to make a sound, but Pidge noticed.

"Gonna miss your _girlfriend_ , Lance?" she teased, eyes glimmering mischievously. Feeling his face redden, Lance smacked the table with his clenched fist.

"Of course not!" he spat, sounding much angrier than he'd intended. Keith stared wide-eyed at him and he felt Hunk lean away. Abashed, Lance relaxed his tingling hand and looked sheepishly at the table in front of him. "Sorry. That was a little dramatic."

"Is something the matter, Lance?" Allura guiled, brow knotted with concern. She'd only ever known Lance as the perpetual optimist, the happiest one on the team who could always be counted on to lift everyone else's spirits. Lance had the uncomfortable feeling she could read minds and he threw up a mental wall. Who could say if it worked.

"Everything's fine. I wish everyone would stop asking me that," he said in a low voice, scalp prickling with shame as all the eyes turned on him grew disapproving.

"Maybe you should just admit you're not fine," Pidge snapped, always the first to call out his bullshit if he wouldn't own up himself.

Lance grit his teeth but couldn't refute, so he defensively crossed his arms over his chest and hunched in his seat despite his aching stomach's resistance.

"You've been acting strange since yesterday, dude. Just because you turned in your v-card doesn't give you the license to be a jerk."

"I don't wanna hear it, Hunk," Lance protested, the reprimand from his best friend unhinging him more than anyone else's.

"Sorry, 'v-card?'" Coran said in an earnest voice. No one answered him.

"Can I be excused?" Lance interjected, pushing to his feet as a rippling pain crawled down his back. He didn't wait for anyone to respond, stamping slightly to cover his agonized hobble back out the door, bee-lining for his room again.

 _**Fuck**_. _God dammit_. If he wanted anyone ( _Allura_ ) to like him anymore he'd certainly killed all his chances now. All they'd wanted was to help – but how could he begin to ask for help when he barely understood what was wrong, himself?

He paused at the door, anger evaporating, leaning on his forearm to breathe down the urge to vomit. His abdomen groaned, something terrifyingly large-feeling thrusting against the control panels tightly stitched around it. He couldn't fix this alone. He needed… needed to ask for help. If they would even listen to him anymore.

"I knew it. You're hurt."

Lance jumped. He'd been so lost in his whirling thoughts Keith had managed to sneak up on him, again. The smaller boy scrutinized him. Lance managed to avoid palming his belly as he glared back. Keith didn't flinch; he just seemed tired. "I know the look. You're acting like I do when I have really bad cramps."

"It's not like _that_ ," Lance blurted, disgusted. He winced at the flash of irritation in Keith's eyes – he couldn't help having periods, and he saw no reason to keep them to himself as long as he was out anyway, that was all. "I…" he frowned, revisiting that ludicrous idea from earlier – that he'd in some way _gotten_ _pregnant_ with something.

"Lance?"

"Maybe it _is_."

"...What?"

Lance threw open his door and pulled Keith inside with him. Any of the Paladins would do at this point, but Keith was already here and damn it, other than Shiro he actually had the most level head off the battlefield when it was something extreme like this. And no way he could confess something like _this_ to Shiro, not as the first one to know.

"Lance, what are you--!" He hushed at Lance's frantic gesturing, before the Blue Paladin locked the door firmly, double-checking it, even. A chill settled over his spine. He'd only ever seen Lance as a goofball even in the field, but especially off of it. This was _serious_.

"I really need you to keep your head, because I have no idea what to do here," Lance began, aware of his trembling hands going to his barely contained, increasingly heavy belly – and of Keith's eyes flicking down to follow them.

Keith's face grew even paler as incredulity competed with understanding, the reality dawning on him even before Lance reached for the back of his suit.

"Are you…?" Lance hoped Keith could say the words for him, if only to spare him from declaring it himself.

His bodysuit split as the tension snapped away and it peeled down his front and arms to his hipbones, Keith's eyes widening in mystified shock as the compression paneling lost tension and Lance's abdomen seemed to grow impossibly large right in front of him.

Lance couldn't hold back a sob – he could swear his stomach protruded even _further_ than before; he had to clasp his fingers underneath to hold it up, to save himself from tipping forward.

"Holy _shit_ ," Keith squawked, taking a step backward. Ashamed tears tumbled down Lance's cheeks, as he gaped in mounting horror at his grotesquely swollen body. "Lance, you…"

"Yeah," he uttered in a very small voice.

"Lance, is that what I think it is?" Lance couldn't say it. "Are you fucking _pregnant_?" And to that, Lance feared to offer a response. He sniffled, unable to meet Keith's eyes even as the sight of his own stomach repulsed him.

"I don't know for sure, but… I think I might be."

"Does…" Lance looked up through his lashes. Keith's hand stretched out, a little timidly. Toward Lance's shoulder. When he noticed Lance watching he pulled it back in. Something sank in Lance's chest. "Have you felt anything?"

After a carefully taken breath, Lance nodded.

"Holy shit."

"Yeah."

"Does Shiro know?"

"Just you," Lance admitted. "I… I thought it was nothing, at first, but then…" His forlorn gaze back down at the globe of angrily stretched flesh in his sweating hands finished the sentence for him. Keith stepped forward, around to his side, placing that uncertain hand on Lance's shoulder. He had his usual stoic face on, but this close Lance could see the shade of panic in his dark eyes. He couldn't decide if it comforted him to know the most fearless Paladin was as scared as he was.

"I gotta be honest, I don't know what to make of this." Violet spheres roved over Lance's misshapen body. "When did it start?"

Lance's voice cracked as he spoke. "I think...two days ago?"

"Did you eat something?" Keith started. "Dude, Pidge said you ate a _ton_ the other day, maybe you're just allergic--" He cut himself off when Lance paled in horror rather than blush in embarrassment. "What?"

"I started feeling weird before that. After… after…" _Mol_. Now his face _burned_ and he hid it in his clammy hands, barely able to suppress the undignified yell that threatened to burst out of his throat.

Keith seemed to put it together in the same moment. "Lance, did _she_ fucking use you as a goddamn _incubator_?!"

"I'm _not!_ " Lance wailed, ridiculous as it sounded when something – multiple somethings – had taken firm root and migrated through his gravid belly even as he stood still. "I mean, I _can't_ be. There's no way. It was my first time-- I'm a _guy!_ "

Keith pulled his lips in, unimpressed. He cleared his throat. Lance's wide pale eyes flicked over to him.

"You know what I mean," he whined placatingly, sinking down to the floor as the weight of his stomach and situation pulled him into a hunkering crouch. As if anyone could manage to hide, big as he was. Keith remained standing, leaning against the wall and schooling his frustrated features into something a little more neutral.

"Mol's also an alien. And if my dad had me with a Galra, I'm not gonna be the first to say a human and a wasp alien procreating is off the table."

Lance flinched. "I'm a _dude_. I mean, _assigned_ dude. And we _definitely_ didn't… And even if we _had_..."

A bit of Keith's trademark smirk crept in as Lance continued spluttering. "Just saying, I've pegged enough cis guys to know from how you were walking the other day that she definitely _did_ put her weird alien dick inside _you_."

"For fuck's sake!" Lance groaned, curling around his belly – had it grown even bigger while they'd been here talking? He couldn't tell. He just wanted it _gone_. "I don't need to know any of that."

"Prude," Keith dismissed, turning to lean his shoulders on the wall and arching to stretch out his sore abdomen.

"How does someone like you get to be so blasé about sex?" he wondered aloud, wishing he could take it back as soon as he said it. He knew this was none of his business; he just hated feeling so exposed right now. He felt Keith's intense gaze on him – evaluating how he'd always heard that sort of question against how Lance probably intended it. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked you that." Lance meant it. When a solid minute passed with no response from Keith, but the increasing prickle on the back of Lance's neck from his stare, the tension left abruptly. Keith looked straight ahead, a vaguely reflective look on his features.

Lance's belly churned again, and unless the stress had made him go crazy he swore he felt the turgid flesh swell out another inch under his scrabbling hands. Only his groan at the impossible stretch of his skin alerted Keith anything had happened, and the Red Paladin knelt down to Lance's level.

"Lance, you need to go to the med bay."

"No," Lance refused with a childish stubbornness, rapidly shaking his head.

"Dude, look at yourself. If this thing gets any bigger you're gonna burst. I'm surprised you haven't already." His jaw clenched with a hard click of his teeth. He looked ill. "Where the fuck are you even _keeping_ it?"

A telltale shift of something solid through his rear pelvis confirmed every inkling. "Come on, Keith, I'm cis. Where do you _think_?"

"Jesus _shit_ ," Keith blurted – in context, it was almost funny. _Almost_.

"Somehow I think that's both the wrong and right response at the same time."

Keith swatted his shoulder, peeved that he could joke even at a time like this. "All the more reason to get you to the med bay. Your intestines are gonna rupture if this goes on."

Lance pursed his lips. That… sounded really painful. Keith hadn't finished. "You can't possibly think you'd be able to push it out yourself."

"Them."

Keith blinked.

"Keith, I think Mol laid _eggs_. A _lot_ of them."

He watched a dozen thoughts flit past Keith's baffled face. And then he gaped down at Lance's distended and twitching abdomen. "Are you sure they're _still_ eggs?"

As if on cue something undulated at the crest of Lance's belly – something definitely not encased by a shell of any sort. "I'm taking that as a 'no,'" Lance squeaked, both boys wide-eyed as the taut skin rippled over the wandering embryo.

"That… dude, that's freaking _nasty_ ," Keith almost whispered, looking distinctly green and guarding his sensitized stomach.

"You're not hosting the damn things," Lance breathed out, unable to lay an exploratory hand to his own flesh. The single moving spawn had triggered movement elsewhere in his belly, and now he felt tiny flutters and presses all through his swollen gut, and he completely forgot how to breathe in his mounting horror. "Keith, I need help."

The plaintive whine seemed to snap Keith into action, and he pushed to his feet, knuckles briefly massaging his low back. "Okay, med bay. Can you walk? I'm not sure I can carry you…"

"I think so. I mean, I could manage alright ten minutes ago." He gazed at his belly. "I don't have anything I can wear, though."

Keith looked like he wanted to slap him again – what were clothes when he looked a sudden move away from birthing wasp alien larvae out of his ass – but he bit down on any frustrated outburst and merely said, "Wait here." He disappeared out the door only to come back seemingly seconds later with a worn pair of sweatpants and an equally used black T-shirt that both looked large enough to fit at least three of him.

"They're Shiro's," he said as if it wasn't obvious they weren't his, "so they should work for now."

Lance blinked at the garments, sniffing them on impulse to check how clean they were. They smelled... _like Keith_ , a helpful little voice supplied. He balked.

"Don't ask me why I have them, just put them on so we can get those fuckers out of you."

A sharp bubbling sensation along his side prodded Lance toward obedience, and he let Keith take an arm over his shoulders to support his ungainly weight on the way to the medical wing. The Blue Paladin winced every so often, his center of balance completely decimated and perpetually shifting as the clutch of embryos inside him moved through his belly.

"How much does it hurt?" Keith asked when Lance emitted a high-pitched gasp as a feeling like multiple stones dropped lower in his pelvis.

"It doesn't, that much." It was a lie and he knew that Keith knew it. "You're probably feeling worse right now." He'd looked up in time to see Keith's mouth twist over a vise-like squeeze between his hips.

"I'm not about to give birth," he countered wryly. "Can you make it?"

"Yeah," The med bay doors hissed open and Keith rushed the last few strides to the nearest bed.

"I'll call Coran, but the others might come, too…" He let the thought hang – it was up to Lance to decide if he was okay with that.

A violent lurch of the larvae in his belly took away his choices. Paging was the quickest way to get Coran over here. Jaw clenched, Lance abruptly nodded toward the overhead – if nothing else, at least the rest would get an explanation for the last two days.

Keith's voice sounded high and scared, magnified over the castle's speakers.

"Coran, we need you in the medical bay, immediately!" He glanced over at Lance's wide eyes and flushed face, and added decisively, "Coran only!" Even if it didn't keep the others at bay, Lance felt a rush of gratitude toward Keith for at least trying.

The minutes passed like hours while Lance curled in mounting discomfort and pain over his grossly distended belly, Keith powerless to do anything other than quietly fret and watch him. But a pattern of hurried footfalls preceded Coran's entry, where he stopped short and gaped baldly at Lance's engorged shape, far too big for Shiro's clothing to hide.

"Ancients preserve us!" he swore, looking squarely at the globe of flesh under the tightened black material. "Lance, what happened? Wait--" he cut them both off, massaged his temple, face growing serious as he recalled events of the past few days. "Did no one think to tell you how Malthusians reproduce?"

No one would have ever thought Lance could look paler than Keith, but in that moment of anguish he turned chalk white. "No," he uttered in the smallest, most childlike voice anyone had ever heard. His hands held the sides of his belly, desperately, like he hoped he could prevent it from splitting open.

"It's a miracle you've managed to carry them this long, but we need to get them out of you right now. Are you comfortable with that?"

"Yes," Lance said without any hesitation. Coran's brow knitted.

"It's surgery, Lance. You'll have a more complicated recovery than a simple burn wound. You'll have a scar."

"I have a scar anyway," Lance dismissed, eyes wide. "I'm not waiting for these to come out on their own--"

"And you shouldn't," Coran cut him off, already heading to the wash station to prepare for the procedure. Lance swallowed the rest of his sentence. In tremulous silence the boys watched the Altean work, calling up various charts on the holo screens and gathering materials. A diagnostics arm panned over to measure, scan, and internally image Lance's body. The attached screen was turned away, and neither of the boys wanted to see the results anyway.

To bridge the fearful quiet Keith murmured, "All I can think of right now is that one scene in 'Grey's Anatomy' when the guy swallowed all the doll heads."

"The Judy Dolls? I think he put those in the other way." Lance started. "You watched 'Grey's Anatomy?'"

Blushing, Keith stared at a patch of floor and shrugged. "I kinda had a crush on Dr. Burke. I was twelve."

Even if Lance didn't have knife-like pain in his gut he couldn't have brought himself to tease Keith. So he merely said, "Yeah, me too. Also Izzy." A stabbing sensation near his kidney broke the moment. "Somehow I doubt these things would be any fun pooping out."

Keith scoffed, shaking his head at how blunt Lance could be. Then his face grew wondering. "It's been two days, hasn't it? Why _haven't_ you?"

Now Lance turned beet red. "I… I _can't_ \--"

"Malthusian eggs and larvae secrete a mucous which paralyzes the host's digestive tract," Coran explained, having overheard this rather uncomfortable part of the conversation on his way back. He turned the far corner of the diagnostic screen towards him to skim the initial results. "No peristalsis, no natural elimination of the embryos. This way, the larvae don't need to abandon the host until they've developed enough to survive without it."

Keith blanched. "Please don't be about to say the larvae make their own way out."

Coran frowned and released the screen; it pivoted back to its neutral position. "Well, I was. But now instead I will say that the host is usually deceased by then; hardly worth staying in a place with free food and lodging once the food stops coming in."

Lance felt like he might vomit, if there was anything in his stomach to bring up. That just explained his monstrous appetite recently. Coran pressed a button to print out the diagnostics report, and strode back to resume preparing for surgery with more exacting direction.

"You seriously okay with him rooting around in there? What if he cuts open a lung or something?"

Lance had more confidence in Coran than that, but now he thought of that scene in 'Grey's Anatomy' again. "Coran," he dared, voice breaking over a stab of pain.

"Yes, my boy?" Coran's brow creased in concern as he paused and looked up, worry for Lance chipping through his usual brusque manner.

Lance gulped – neither of the evils exactly felt lesser, but he'd rather avoid getting cut open if there was a viable alternative. "Isn't there something we can use to… to get things moving?"

"Come again?"

Keith snorted at the context. Lance ignored him. "Peristalsis. There's drugs that can make that happen, right?"

Coran considered him sternly, putting it together and, hopefully, recalling whether they had a sort of space Ex-Lax on board. Keith bit his knuckle to hold back his sudden hysterics. Part of Lance wanted to drop kick him from the room. A large-feeling grub moved along his side and Lance winced with a suppressed groan, rubbing the overstretched and angry red skin.

"Based on your progress, I don't know if it would take effect in time," he admitted, hand on his chin. _That_ sobered Keith right up. He glanced at the swollen globe of Lance's belly – probably mentally calculating how much larger the larvae could grow versus how much longer Lance could bear it. "It's more effective on an empty stomach, though. If you'll pardon my phrasing."

Lance grimaced – he hadn't eaten all day, although he'd never managed to feel full since Mol put these things in him, anyway. "Do it. I just want them out."

With a curt nod Coran disappeared into the anteroom, returning with a bottle of pale blue tablets and a packet of water. "Normally I would caution against more than two. But in this case…"

Lance took the bottle without a word and dumped a handful of tablets into his palm.

"You're gonna be shitting for a week," Keith said dryly as Lance tipped them all back with a long swig of water.

"If it gets these things out of me, then that's the idea."

Coran had nothing to say to that, but Lance could almost hear the aggravated " _Humans_!" echoing in his head. "I guess now we wait. Ehrm. Perhaps you'll want to move into the bathroom…"

"Already there," Lance said as he scooted forward off the bed, grunting a little with the exertion and the unaccustomed weight of landing. He felt in better spirits now they were on their way to resolving the issue.

"I was going to say, once the compound takes effect. It might be at least one or two Earth hours yet." Lance stood stock still, wavering a little as his heavy belly threw his balance, and stared aghast at Coran.

"An _hour_?" he reiterated, one palm clutching under his stomach to ease the strain on his back. Keith looked on in sympathy. Coran too looked sorry for him.

"I did say it was the less favorable action. But I would hesitate to perform surgery now that you've done this much." He frowned and thought, hand to his chin. "I also am loathe to suggest any additional food in your stomach, but it would keep the little beasts occupied. Of course, then they might get bigger, and I don't know if you can even get them out yourself as they are now."

All eyes zeroed in on Lance's stomach again – and the ripples of skin where the alien offspring traveled through his large intestine. Lance winced. "I just want them _out of me_ ," he hissed, voice catching on a self-pitying sob. He felt a steady hand clasp his shoulder; Coran guided him back to the cot.

"I'll bring you something. Keith, would you mind keeping an eye on him?"

Keith looked up from his feet, face bloodless and drawn. He nodded, tight-lipped. Coran looked between the two – it was obvious both boys, constant rivals, were suffering in their own ways, and now he was throwing them together – but he did nothing more except to encouragingly grip Keith's shoulder on the way out. (Keith snorted quietly again – he'd picked that move up from Shiro.)

After the door closed and locked, Keith blew out a heavy sigh and shuffled to Lance's bedside, pulling a nearby chair a little closer. Lance stayed leaning on the mattress more than sitting on it, both hands straining to hold his belly up. He feared that if he truly sat down he would never stand up again.

Keith sank into the chair, arm wrapped over his cramping uterus. He looked more ill than Lance felt, and it struck him that really wasn't fair. "How bad is it?" he asked when Keith grimaced and curled forward, eyes closed tightly over the pain. Violet eyes slitted open at him.

"You have a nest of space maggots inside of you and you're asking how bad my cramps are? At least my body's doing what it's supposed to, sort of. You're not made to get pregnant at all."

Lance shrugged, leaning a little more heavily on the bed as he gazed down at Keith. The poor boy could barely sit up straight; he was obviously downplaying things.

"You shouldn't have to deal with that stuff, though. It sucks."

"Well, I do," Keith said matter-of-factually, also sounding defeated. "Unless we can find something that passes for human testosterone out here, I'm stuck with this. Better to just deal and not complain." His brow tightened and he suppressed a low moan, holding his belly. When the vise around his hips released him he eased himself upright, gripping his knees. "You're the one who has to give birth tonight. Don't worry about me."

Of course. Keith hated to know when people worried about him. Not that it stopped anyone.

Lance couldn't help an ironic smile. "I thought I was shitting these things out?"

Keith glared at him. "Big as they're gonna be, I bet you'll tell us all later that you were, in fact, giving birth."

Lance opened his mouth to retort, but Coran loudly opening the door silenced him. So he got to be treated to Keith's triumphant smirk as Coran laid out a serving tray of various fridge-sourced leftovers at Lance's bedside.

"I don't know what would be most effective, I just brought what didn't seem like it would be missed." He then tutted and made Lance sit down – far enough on the cot that his belly effectively pinned him in place so he couldn't slide back to his feet if he tried. Grumbling, Lance adjusted his position as well as he could to ease the redoubled pressure on his hips and tailbone. Sympathetic, Coran brought the serving tray now onto the mattress next to him, insisting he eat something with a soft, disarmingly paternal voice.

Lance regarded some of the options with suspicion – some of this had been in the fridge longer than the rest. "Wasn't this from two weeks ago?" he whispered to Keith about the contents of a particular bowl when Coran had moved away.

"You're gonna shit it out anyway if the little bastards don't eat it all," he groused – apparently annoyed that Lance could still be such a princess now of all times.

"Only if I don't puke it up first," Lance groaned in distaste, nose crinkling. Keith rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair, apparently not keen to leave even though he hadn't been specifically asked to remain. His hands folded over his cramping womb. Sitting, Lance could see how bloated his belly was. It looked heavy. No wonder Keith moved so sluggishly. "Did you eat anything today?"

"Don't worry about me," Keith said again, closing his eyes. Frown deepening, Lance nudged a bowl of pink-specked porridge towards him. Keith slitted his eyes open at the scraping sound, then closed them again. But the corner of his mouth ticked upward and Lance figured that was acknowledgment enough. Keith didn't have to eat it now. But he knew he was free to eat whatever he wanted off the tray his stomach could tolerate, so that would do.

Lance's gut twinged as he leaned back again, and he hissed and attempted to rub the point of pain. Keith deigned to open one eye this time, again closing it when he concluded nothing urgent had happened.

"It's weird that you're the one who's pregnant," Keith said into the quiet that fell between them.

"Preaching to the choir, man," Lance responded flatly, sweeping his palm across his belly – the stretched skin drum-tight under his fingertips and sparking with heat and pain. And the _movement_ he felt inside him constantly now. Not subtle ones, either. "As opposed to…?" Lance prompted – who else could possibly be pregnant? Everyone else was either physically incapable (or, at least, not getting egged by a wasp alien), or celibate as fuck, or ace as absence-of-fuck. Keith raised an eyebrow.

…

Oh. Keith was exactly none of those things. He'd made a certain name for himself at the Garrison after reaching the age of consent, although Keith alone could say how well it applied; he didn't care if people said he'd slept with them, and he never bothered to confirm or deny anything they claimed. All Lance had was the three or four times he had gone into the hall to get a glass of water from the bathroom in the middle of the night, only to make direct eye contact with Keith coming back to his own dorm – wearing his civilian clothes, with tousled hair, bite marks at his neckline, and a stilted gait.

They lapsed into silence again, Lance contemplating his enlarged stomach. He wondered now, for the first time, if Keith even wanted kids; and whether he'd be willing to carry if he couldn't manage to foster or adopt. Lance decided that was a question he would never ask out loud.

"Feeling anything?" Keith asked in a faint voice – his thoughts also elsewhere, it seemed. Lance shook his head.

"Just them, still," he said, reaching forward for a piece of space bread Hunk had managed to put together a recipe for, after a week or two of experimenting. His stomach gave a hungry rumble as the first bite settled in. Keith snorted and quirked an eyebrow at him; Lance ignored him. He finished the slice and leaned back again, and, after a brief hesitation, folded his hands on the crest of his belly. "I just want this to be over."

Keith hummed sympathetically, glancing around the empty med bay. Coran was nearby, he felt sure. But if he couldn't have anyone else to help him, Lance realized he felt glad to have Keith next to him. Of all the others, Keith would get that he didn't need to fix anything, he just needed to be present. And, moreover, all evidence suggested Keith wanted to be here for Lance's sake. He wondered at it, until a horrible cramp deep in his abdomen made him pitch forward with a low moan.

"Lance?" Keith asked when the pain died and he could hear again.

Another hard clench of muscle closer to his tailbone made Lance whimper at its peak. "Oh, god," he sobbed as it seemed every inch of his digestive tract seized at once, squeezing downward on something that felt impossibly firm, solid, immovable. "Bathroom," he wheezed, already struggling off the bed to his feet. He nearly fell onto his face – had his stomach really grown that heavy? – but Keith moved quickly and managed to steady him.

Lance's boxers felt damp, and he wasn't sure if it was something like birthing fluids, or only his cold sweat.

"Is it… are they coming?"

Lance nodded, groaning at the force of peristalsis newly restored to his gut. He heard Keith coaxing him forward to the adjoining restrooms but the words couldn't get through the roaring in his ears as the agony centered down low in his hips, stomach bulging out so huge he feared they would break. Pain like a spike driven through him rammed up his back and his knees gave, collapsing him to the ground clutching his rock-hard belly.

"Lance!" Keith yelped, trying to hold him upright, "Coran!" he called over Lance's head.

"It… it feels _stuck_ ," Lance grated, paling in mortification. Keith just held onto his arm, lost for words – panicking, even.

"Can you stand?" Coran said as he approached, already looping his hands under Lance's other arm and helping Keith pull him up. Lance cried out and leaned heavily on Keith, but he remained on his feet, teeth clenched so hard his jaw spasmed. "I know it hurts, but it will be over soon, now. Come on, to the bath."

They sat Lance in the tub after Coran laid down some towels to cushion him; Keith pulled his shirt off over his head when he listlessly murmured about feeling too hot in this room. Sweat dotted his face and back, his thighs straining wide as he felt something large and solid edging further downward. Through tears he glimpsed his heaving stomach, looking absolutely huge at this angle, the veiny skin stretched pale pink and nearly translucent. How would he ever get through this? He should have gone through with the surgery...

"Lance," Keith's voice broke through, "I need to get your pants off, too." He'd felt something around his sides but hadn't registered Keith's hands. With his cooperation Keith yanked them and his boxers off in one quick motion, and Coran immediately dropped a sheet over his lower body.

"How are you doing?" the Altean checked in, only the slight tilt of his brows betraying his steadily increasing worry.

"Feels like I'm having an actual baby," Lance grated, hitching himself to sit up higher, trying to find a position where he could breathe.

"You are, sort of," Coran said, "Although I will agree they're not, ah, _babies_ as most of us here would recognize them," he added with a nervous twist of his mouth when Lance found space to glare daggers at him. "Keith, you don't need to stay. You probably don't want to see this."

"Let him stay," Lance murmured, eyes sliding over to check his response. Keith had already stepped forward, crouching at Lance's head. He wouldn't look toward Lance's feet, or what lay under the sheet. Lance could just see if he craned his neck – the thin river of blood trickling down the drain. "Please, Coran."

Still doubtful, Coran at last nodded and moved out of the way. "I'll be back with more supplies. You're in for a long night."

With those semi-ominous parting words he left the little bathroom, leaving the young Paladins to take in the enormity of what was now happening.

" _Holy shit_ ," Keith breathed after Lance strained against the pressure in his belly, and the blood stream grew thicker.

"Stuck," Lance repeated himself in a small, terrified voice, breaths coming harshly. He bore down again, shrieking as he felt something like a seam ripping, but it was his skin.

The blood flow widened.

"Lance," Keith warned him, holding him back to the wall of the tub, "That's not working-- Fuck. Lance, they're too big!"

"God _fucking_ \-- ah!" Lance threw his head back and whined, tears streaming from his eyes. "Then what else am I supposed to do?"

He couldn't see but he swore he could hear Keith's whirling thoughts, fighting to come up with _something_.

Then Keith's hands were pawing at his shoulders and Lance forced his gaze straight. "Knees," Keith said sharply, pulling him forward. "Gravity."

Ah. That's how Lance's niece was born – her mother was 90 pounds soaking wet and managed to deliver with gravity as her doula.

It was worth a try. The buggers, collectively anyway, felt weighty enough in his belly it might work.

" _Uhgh_ …" Lance moaned again as he found his positioning, leaning hard on his forearms on the side of the tub. He heard the door open and Coran announced more towels, water packets, and something else that drowned itself in a new flood of miserable agony. Keith stayed at his bowed head, hands on his shoulders to keep him steady. " _Fuck_."

"Is it helping?"

"Dunno yet…"

Keith's mouth set in a tight line. His fingernails bit into Lance's skin.

Squatting, Lance thought distantly. He needed to open up his hips. Somehow.

"What are you doing?"

Lance managed to get a foot under him, knee out to the side, the shift in balance making him dizzy. "You know that 'squatty potty' thing?"

Keith didn't seem like he did, but he grasped Lance's hands and hauled him up to both feet. Pain raked up Lance's spine and he moaned, huffing against Keith's hip when he tipped forward. Without a word about it Keith steadied him again, taking some of his weight while he tried to find some position – any position – that held some promise of moving things along.

" _Fuck_ ," he spat when nothing seemed to change yet blood continued to drip between his legs. If he could at least feel anything slipping downward he would have a little more composure. But no such luck, and so he was stuck here swollen beyond physical capacity and his body _aching_ from head to toe but especially his gut and hips. His heart rate spiked. His desperation roared in his ears. "Oh, _god_ ," he whimpered as his straining abdominals rippled painfully over fetal movement, a pulse of blood dropping under him.

"Lance," Keith said quietly, tucking Lance's head under his chin and drawing him in to lean against his chest – he was out of ideas if all he could think of was to fucking _hold_ him – and Lance broke into undignified sobbing, one arm trying to hold his low-slung belly off his overtaxed hips, thighs shaking with the effort of keeping him up. The other arm hooked around Keith's back, fingers clutching at his shoulder as he muffled his crying in the front of Keith's shirt.

"It _hurts_ ," he whined, voice childish and tired. Keith didn't stroke his hair or rub his back, but honestly that would have been too much.

"Want me to get Coran? Or Shiro?"

"No," Lance butted in – he couldn't let Shiro see him like this, he just couldn't.

"I'll talk to Coran, get him to do the surgery--"

"It might hurt them," Lance protested, almost in hysterics at the thought – he didn't ask for this nor could he ever expect it, but they didn't deserve to get sick or die from whatever Altean sedative Coran might employ, any errant nick from a scalpel.

"Lance, they're _killing_ you," Keith snapped irritably.

"Keith, Malthusians aren't evil. Mol just… she just made a mistake. I didn't understand her, I thought it was all dirty talk, when she said she wanted to see me all filled up--"

" _Dude_ ," Keith interjected, his heartbeat quickening where Lance's cheek laid against it.

"I thought she meant--"

"I've got it." Keith's arms tightened around Lance, then relaxed again as if Keith had realized how he was acting. "Did you seriously never see 'Alien?'"

"That's fiction," Lance defended himself. Keith huffed, losing patience, but he didn't push Lance away. "You… you don't think they'll actually burst out of me?"

" _Look_ at yourself."

Lance rocked his hips a little in an effort to coax _something_ to slide lower in his pelvis. "If they've all hatched… Shouldn't they be making their way out, the easy way?"

" _Wasp_ ," Keith deadpanned with eerie certainty. Lance felt himself grow pale, stomach clenching as if he could lock the grubs in place. "Still nothing?"

Lance settled on his knees again, looking like he wanted nothing more than to collapse on his side right there in the tub. So he did, too heavily for Keith to catch him, clouded blue eyes sliding closed.

"Lance! _Lance!_ " Keith shouted, jostling his shoulder, other hand flat on the side of his belly. His palm felt warm, and softer than Lance expected – when had Keith taken his gloves off, he wondered distantly. A larva rolled under Keith's palm and he felt Keith press against the movement instead of recoiling. Like maybe he could squash it from the outside.

"Keith, I don't think I can do this."

"Stubborn ass, yes you can!" the Red Paladin hissed at him, and maybe Lance was hallucinating from the throbbing pain in his back and belly and hips, but he could have sworn Keith had started to cry. "Because if you don't then I'm gonna have to watch you get cut open and – I can't, okay? I could barely watch you in that healing pod after…." Something landed on his rib that felt like a raindrop, but they were inside… How could it be raining when they were inside? " _LANCE!_ "

White-hot pain sliced up his stomach and Lance screamed – had he really just been cut open?! – but when he felt it his skin was still in one piece, but the knifing pains kept coming, splitting all along the globe of over-tight flesh. " _Oh, god,_ " Lance wailed, curling over the pain as much as he could, although not far with the girth now up in his ribs.

"Push!" Keith roared above his cries, pressing on his tender skin as if he could palpate the mass down and out of him.

"I can't--"

"You _will_. Dammit, Lance, don't give up on me like this!" And despite his heaviness Keith was managing to pull him back upright, enough for his belly to weigh down in his hips again, the bulk low in his pelvis. His thighs, if he could even see, were slick with blood. "They're only gonna get bigger," Keith huffed from the exertion, gazing at Lance's belly taking up an obscene amount of space in the tub. "You need to push, Lance. _Now_."

Lance whined again, wishing he could pass out to escape the pain. Keith – oh god, Keith was still here, thank god – held him up still, coaching him through staying awake, through breathing. As if Lance was actually in labor.

"Keeping them inside is only gonna hurt them, too," Keith urged in a low voice. Lance focused his tear-filled eyes on his. And stilled, everything around him sharpening. Overtaking the fear was a desperate seriousness in Keith's violent glare. A deep regret echoed in the steely purple glint. _Grief_.

_Oh my god._

Lance bore down, still in shock at a revelation he didn't understand yet, but the first push rolled the first of the offspring firmly in place and he straddled out his knees wider. With his hands clawing in Keith's biceps he strained against the mass dropping through his intestines, the pressure in his rectum confounding. Fluids dripped, splattered with bursts of gas – then he felt an impossible, tearing stretch and something large dropped out of him with a watery slap on the tub flooring. Lance thought he might throw up. He caught his breath as Keith craned his neck around to check. _Please, let it be--_

"That's one out," he confirmed, voice unnervingly distant, "It's not as big as I thought it would be."

Well, it'd certainly _felt_ huge. The blood drained further from Lance's face and he hiccuped in fear. Keith squeezed his shoulders, mouth a thin line.

"It's really gonna be a long night, huh?" Lance squeaked, thighs trembling with effort.

"Keep going," was all Keith had to say in response. Another larva had already made its way down, and with a little straining it too fell to the tub between Lance's knees. It seemed to become an internal "follow the leader"-type situation from there, as the alien spawn proceeded to come one right after the other, several at a time. After a half-dozen or so the birthing would pause a few minutes and Lance had to rock in place, he or Keith massaging his gradually shrinking belly to encourage the larvae higher up his digestive tract to move downward. After over two hours of this routine Lance sat shaking and exhausted in a hodge-podge of blood, stray feces, and several dozen writhing, wriggling Malthusian young. The smell was horrific.

"Are you done?" Keith dared to ask when it had been over ten minutes since the last expulsion of any kind, settling back on his heels. Lance swallowed, hand massaging the tender loose skin on his overtaxed belly. He still looked bloated, and he felt there was still something inside that shouldn't be. But his entire torso ached from sternum to sacrum, and he could barely tell a gas bubble from fetal movement anymore. Heaving a ragged sigh, he folded his other arm on the tub edge and rested his head on it, eyes fever-bright and face flushed.

"I want to wait a little longer," Lance said meekly, hand settling low on his sore belly. The worst part had been the involuntary erections as the grubs pushed down and out of him, just thick enough to catch his prostate on the way out. For fuck's sake, he'd even _come_ a few times, right in front of Keith of all people. But Keith invariably said nothing, taking his mortifyingly suggestive moaning in stride and even deigning to wipe him down during lulls in the delivery. The tremors had settled deep in his bones; more than anything he was afraid his legs would crumple under him if he tried to stand now. Sweat glazed his back and forehead, drenched his hair. _God_ , he wanted it to be over.

Keith, for his part, now seemed distracted by the multitude of gelatinous grubs swarming around and between Lance's legs. The question stood bare on his face without any need to say it – what on earth were they going to do with them? Admittedly, there was no discreet way to get them off the Castle-Ship – there were far too many. And even just wanting to say goodbye to Mol might not be enough for Shiro and Allura. They might have to confess the whole thing.

Lance wondered if he could ever live that down. Bad enough that Keith knew.

"When was it?" he asked quietly. Violet eyes darted over to him. "How long ago were you pregnant?"

Keith let out a weary rush of air. He didn't seem angry. Or even like he wanted to deny it; his dark eyes now looked sad.

"I delivered him about six months before all of this started," he said so quietly Lance could barely hear over his own heartbeat. He scoffed derisively at his own welling tears.

"Keith," Lance soothed, sitting up to take his hand, squeeze his fingers. The Red Paladin stilled, eyes wide and glassy.

"I didn't want to give birth without Shiro there. And then… then I _couldn't_. When the paramedics got there, they told me he was already gone. Strangled by the umbilical cord. If I'd just let the birth happen I might have been able to save him." Keith's forehead leaned onto Lance's shoulder, to hide his tearful face. Lance let him weep, so softly.

"Did you name him?" Lance asked quietly. Keith's sobbing grew quiet, pensive.

"Never got around to it," he said, "I didn't accept any of it was happening until my water broke."

Six months before Shiro crash-landed back on Earth in an alien escape pod, Keith had delivered an unplanned, stillborn baby. "You were pregnant when you got expelled," Lance realized aloud. Keith's breath hitched.

"They expelled me _because_ I got pregnant," he said scornfully. So that meant he wouldn't abort, even for the sake of his education. Lance blinked, remembering time at the Garrison like a teen movie, so far away from his reality now. It had been an open secret that Keith was among the more promiscuous of the cadets despite anyone else's code of conduct; but to refuse to terminate an accidental pregnancy, one that would cost him the future he'd fought tooth and nail to secure over four years... Keith would have done that for only one person.

Lance clasped his hand tighter, hoping to God Keith wouldn't hate him now for this. "The baby was Shiro's, wasn't it?"

Keith froze. Tried to move away. Lance pulled him closer into an unbreakable hug. Already he felt the large hot tears dripping down his front.

"He doesn't know," Keith whispered, voice strained. "He's already so worried about… I couldn't tell him. He'd only blame himself."

Lance couldn't comprehend why – it certainly didn't do Keith any good to bear this cross on his own. But he couldn't argue with Keith now, he'd kept the secret for this long, he probably didn't need to discuss it all immediately.

"I'm sorry, Keith," Lance said at last, hand in Keith's hair. He was too young for that kind of burden. They both were. And the guilt would only continue to eat at him if he continued to bear it alone. "I won't tell anyone."

Keith's jaw was tightly clenched, as if he had a million things to say but he knew none of them were right.

And then he said, "Thanks, Lance," and the way he relaxed against the Blue Paladin was minor, but carried so much meaning that it staggered.

"Anytime, buddy," he intoned softly, warmly, realizing in that moment how much this mattered to both of them. "I'm here if you ever need to talk. About anything," he added. He didn't insist there were no longer any barriers – not after Keith had seen him naked, swollen, bloody, covered in cum and shit, and now so weak he could barely keep himself upright. But he had a feeling Keith got that on his own, anyway. Why else would he choose a time like this to be so vulnerable around a guy like Lance?

He rested his cheek against Keith's hair, passively breathing in the lingering traces of his shampoo. It was sweeter than he expected from someone so… gritty, he felt. But the bright citrus notes actually suited Keith, now that he put them together in the moment.

There was no way Lance smelled like a rose bouquet, however, and Keith was tactful enough to make a dazed comment about cleaning things up. "Can you stand, yet?" he asked, leaning away to survey the damage. For how active the larvae had seemed inside Lance's belly, they actually didn't move around that much now they were out of him. Covered in blood and fecal matter, Lance's first thought was to rinse them off so they looked more like giant worms and less like mobile viscera. He wasn't actually keen to handle them, but he couldn't ask any more of Keith than the boy had already given.

"You might have to help me," Lance admitted, feeling the tremor in his legs still.

"Shower," Keith said briskly, hauling him up as he stood. Lance's knees buckled with the first stride and Keith let him lean far too heavily on his shoulder. But Keith didn't complain aside from an indignant huff on principle, and half-led, half-carried him to the shower stall, turning the spout all the way up and as hot as they could stand it.

"Your clothes," Lance protested when Keith stood in the stream with him, shirt soaking and inadvertently revealing too much of his body's shape.

"You're gonna slip, and fall, and crack your head open," Keith said bluntly. Lance clicked his mouth shut. He shifted his gaze downward, at the bloody water gradually slaking off his shuddering legs. He knew there were more stubborn patches higher up, in places where he might need to physically scour the last traces of the unpleasant birthing away.

But it was helping. To get clean. The steaming water on his over-sore muscles and tender belly felt renewing, and when his inner thighs were no longer sticky with blood and fluids he realized he was starting to feel like he might be okay.

"Can you be in the shower like this?" Lance blurted a sudden thought, looking cautiously at Keith through his lashes. Keith seemed bemused, but Lance's involuntary glace downward had him rolling his eyes.

"I use a cup," he responded flatly. That didn't mean anything to Lance right now, but if it meant Keith wasn't also bleeding down the drain, then that was enough. As if his own blood and shit didn't make this cringe-y enough already.

"Is there soap?" he asked to redirect the subject, glancing around the stall. Keith twisted and drew over a bottle of space shower gel that Hunk had found somewhere, enough for all of the Paladins to keep in every bathroom. Lance cupped his hands in front of his chest. Nodding in silent understanding – he couldn't help Lance with this step – Keith squeezed a generous dollop in Lance's hands and restricted his eyes forward, standing here only to make sure Lance didn't fall onto his face.

Thank god it didn't take that long. Another drop of soap did to scrub his hands, and they remained facing each other under the shower for several minutes more. Lance felt persistently aware of Keith's body – its shape – next to his. He always forgot Keith wasn't assigned male at birth until times like this, when Keith mentioned having cramps or when he wore a sports bra under his shirt instead of his binder for intensive training. Lance wondered what Keith would look like after any surgeries he planned to get. How much his body would change.

"Does it bother you?" Keith asked numbly when Lance let his eyes linger. He switched up to Keith's face. Keith looked weary in a deeper way than having just coached someone through labor. Lance thought Keith's body looked fine, but he didn't spend every waking moment wishing it were different.

"No," he said gently, and Keith allowed him to rest his forehead on his shoulder. "Should it?"

Keith's shoulder tensed, then relaxed. Lance could see the outline of his nipples through his wet shirt. They seemed no different than his. "It bothers me," he said at last.

"Does it help to know I'm not bothered by it?" Lance asked, as much to keep their conversation going as to feed his genuine curiosity.

Keith took a little longer to answer that one. Then, "I don't know. I guess it does." His hands curled around Lance's shoulders took on a different weight, as if Keith was now allowing himself to relax onto him in turn. Like all he had needed was reassurance that even though his body was wrong for him, he was still okay.

"I think I'm clean, now," Lance mumbled, easing himself upright and pretending he couldn't discern the distinct blush on Keith's features. The Red Paladin, equally detached, handed him one of the giant fluffy towels stocked in the bathroom and let Lance handle drying himself after shutting off the water. He still felt a little wobbly on his feet, but he managed the short walk back to the tub. About to collapse, Lance lowered himself to the edge of the tub, looking in on the dozens of larvae he had finished birthing less than an hour ago. His palm naturally fell at his stomach, at the tender flesh and strained muscles. He wondered if the healing pods could do anything about all this new loose skin.

"You can go get Coran, now," he said, the shock settling in and his capacity to make the next decision in any of this mess finally shorting out.

Keith left and returned again with the elder Altean in tow, and with some troubleshooting and later an obvious solution, they cleaned and packed up all the grubs and sent them on their way back to the Malthusians and out of their lives.

Lance spent a few hours in the healing pod under full privacy, except for Keith who feigned illness from menstruation to justify some additional time in the med bay. Lance's stomach was not quite as svelte and toned as before this ordeal when he came out of the pod, but the crepe paper texture of his skin had significantly smoothed over and the deep ache throughout his torso had gone away. Keith still escorted him back to his room, even lingering in the doorway for a moment as if he couldn't convince himself Lance didn't need a babysitter anymore. Lance pretended to have fallen asleep when Keith had stationed himself in complete silence for too long, and he had no idea what they could talk about.

Keith wasn't fooled.

"You're ignoring me," he said, unimpressed. Lance opened his eyes and craned them up to him. "I know you have more questions."

Frowning, Lance tried to come up with a specific, easy question – but he came up with an exhausted blank. "Mostly, why?" he said. Keith tilted his head, squinting. "Why did you help me?"

"Because everyone else leaves you alone when you tell them you're fine. And everything said you weren't." The gentle pink hue of his cheeks as he crossed his arms suggested that was not the full story. "We're a team." Borrowing Shiro's words. "I needed to see that you were going to be okay." To think that Keith, the most aloof of them all, would show the most concern for the well-being of his teammates – and the one who annoyed him most, at that. "And you asked for my help."

"There's also…" Lance paused with a light hum as his lips came together. Raising his chin, Keith looked apprehensive, but resigned. "You were pregnant." Before all of this started, before Shiro went missing, he had conceived a child with Keith. The Red Paladin ducked his head again.

"It doesn't make any difference if I was. The baby died."

Lance pursed his lips. "You still carried it inside of you for nine months." Felt it growing heavier between his hips, watched his stomach swell up, noticed its movements as it grew stronger within his protective womb. "What happened?"

Keith looked about to cry. "Shiro didn't want kids," he whispered hoarsely, hugging himself tighter. "He… thought he couldn't have them, and didn't want them even if it were possible. Said it wouldn't be fair." His hand tracked across his belly, as it must have done so often when he'd held that tiny new life within. "When I found out I was pregnant… I wanted it. If we never found Shiro, I would still have something that was part of him." He shuddered, blinked a silent tear down his cheek and pulled his lips in. "I was scared – Shit, I was _terrified_ , that I might screw this kid up. But all I could think about was how much I wanted Shiro back, and how much I wanted him to see his son."

Lance remained silent, allowing him space to think and talk. This was the sort of honesty Keith craved, but was never permitted to have. He couldn't help imagining how Keith must have felt – out in that little desert shack, separated from everything and with only the baby in his belly for company. How lonely it must have felt. And then he lost that baby before he even got to meet him. "I'm so sorry, Keith," Lance said emphatically into the mournful quiet between them. The Red Paladin's features were drawn, hand still tightly cupping his belly. Cramps, Lance realized. "I was such an ass to you back then, too." Violet eyes squinted over at him, but Keith said nothing right away.

"I should let you rest," he said after another moment, pushing off from the wall.

"Could you stay?" Lance blurted, flushing. He blundered on in the face of Keith's scrutiny. "I know it's stupid, but I kind of really don't wanna wake up by myself, in case… in case…" The last time he'd gone to sleep thinking everything would be fine, it wasn't. Keith made a show of rolling his eyes and dragging his feet, but once he sat on the edge of Lance's mattress some of the tension seemed to roll off of his shoulders. He leaned his elbows on his knees, hands wrapped around each other. His head drooped now and then, and with a clearing of his throat he'd jerk it back up, fighting the weight of his eyelids.

"I know it's weird, but… you can lay down. There's room, and it'd be more comfortable than the floor."

Casting over his shoulder, Keith maintained his back to Lance as he lowered down onto his side, drawing his knees up slightly to ease any strain on his sore belly. Lance backed up against the wall of his bunk, watching the hairs settle on the back of Keith's head and the pillow. A gentle heat radiated off of him.

After a few minutes of only their quiet breathing, Lance submitted to exhaustion and let his eyelids droop.

"Tyler."

Lance didn't stir for a second. "Hm?" he uttered in confusion when no context provided itself.

"I wanted to name the baby Tyler. After my dad."

Lance opened his eyes. Keith still faced away from him, shoulder hunched as he pillowed his head on his hand. "Tyler Shirogane?" Lance offered. Keith curled up a little smaller. "It sounds good." He wanted to pull Keith closer to his chest, breathe in the scent of his freshly-washed hair, taste the salt-sweet skin at the base of his neck… Keith's vertebrae stood out just above the collar of his shirt, protruding as he tucked his chin further. It looked almost as though it should hurt. Lance fought the impulse to kiss it better.

"I don't even have his footprints," Keith whispered in a trembling voice, strained against a sudden overwhelming emotion. "I didn't want anything that someone could find…" And Lance realized why Keith wore a shirt over his binder on even the hottest days, even though he was out to the rest of the team. Why he always wore that stupid belted fanny pack high around his waist and over his shirt, rather than getting pants with actual belt loops.

Tentative, Lance placed a knowing and deeply sympathetic hand over the front of Keith's waist, where he guessed the worst of the stretch marks had clustered on his body. Keith flinched and recoiled, but then relaxed under Lance's palm with an uncertain hum. "Shiro hasn't seen you, either," he concluded. Keith sniffled.

"If I were… If I were actually a cis guy I could say it was weight gain, that I then lost again…" He wiped his eyes and Lance edged closer, hand dropping over the front of Keith's belly. Keith allowed it with a disdaining shift on principle. "But… any one of you could look at me and know. Shiro would _know_." He turned over, facing Lance with wide, wet eyes. "I didn't mean to get pregnant, Lance," he said with a high-pitched, quiet desperation in his voice. "It just happened."

"I believe you," Lance assured him, fixing the long fringe out of his eyes. Lips pursed, Keith frowned at him, as if he doubted Lance's sincerity. A little hurt but also understanding, Lance gently cast his hand along Keith's side, feeling the ribs and muscles and hips under his clothing. Keith was really too skinny; that bothered him.

"Did you eat, today?"

Keith blinked. He gazed down at Lance's hand still propped on his hip. "Wasn't hungry. Cramps."

Nodding, Lance closed his eyes. He wouldn't harp on it now. He felt too tired. "For what it's worth, we match, now. We can be stretch-mark bros."

Keith snorted. "Is that supposed to make me feel _better_?"

"Actually, yes," Lance retorted, drumming his fingers on Keith's side. "It looks less like you've been pregnant if a cis dude has the same stretchmarks as you, right?"

"I don't think your logic's right," Keith started to object, then Lance pulled him forward to rest their foreheads together.

"I'm here with you," Lance said, blue eyes clear and piercing. "You're not alone in any of this. And I'm not saying that cos I think I've been pregnant the way you were pregnant, or anything like that. I mean you don't have to keep everything locked up, just because the rest of us aren't Shiro. You can't live your truth all alone."

Keith pursed his lips, staring. Lance swallowed, nervous when the other boy didn't seem able to react in any way else. Lance stroked Keith's jaw in a moment of reckless boldness. "Shiro isn't the only one here who cares about you. We all want to help you. Let us help." Let _me_ , he wanted to emphasize. Stroked his thumb over Keith's chin, lips pulled in as he entertained the crazy idea of kissing him. He didn't even question where any of this came from, just thought about how Keith's mouth might feel opening up to his; wouldn't it be nice if Keith's lips were actually buttery soft rather than rough and chapped as his personality would suggest? He thought they would feel warm, his breath hot and tinged with black pepper and baked earth. Lance wetted his lips nervously, wondering if he had been staring.

"If all of you knew the truth…" Keith started, focus turning inwards, protective of himself. What could Keith possibly have secret that was bigger than being transgender, or half-Galra? Lance waited for him to finish, or at least hint at something. Keith ducked his head away, knocking Lance's hand off his jaw.

"If we all knew the truth, then we could support you," Lance assured him with more confidence than he felt. Keith looked deeply troubled, and Lance didn't like it.

"No, you wouldn't," Keith insisted, rolling onto his back with his knees drawn up, arms wrapped protectively over his torso but not guarding anything specific. His whole body.

"Hey," Lance checked, managing to prop himself up on his elbow, gazing down at Keith's despondent face. "Don't be so dramatic. You know how much bullshit we've all gotten used to out here? When you came out to us that practically felt normal."

Keith glared at him. Lance shrank back. "You know what I mean, though, right?"

"That was still a shitty way to say it."

Lance clammed his jaw and thought for a moment, rehearsing different phrasings in his head. "When you came out, we couldn't find it in us to make any big deal out of it?"

Keith shifted, expression still grumpy.

Abashed, Lance blundered on, face burning up. "Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, we've all already been through so much together. I don't know what you could think is so bad about you we'd up and reject you just like that."

A tear slipped from the outer corner of Keith's eye as he stared furiously at the ceiling of the bunk alcove. Lance stilled, tracking its movement down Keith's pale face.

"Keith," Lance soothed quietly when another tear followed it, Keith breathing evenly to disguise a sniffle. He wanted to take the other boy's hand, squeeze his fingers, and tell him he didn't have to be so scared, that he didn't have to feel alone anymore. Because it hit him in that moment that was what Keith had always been so worried about from the beginning – that someone he had risked considering a friend would decide they didn't want him anymore.

So he took Keith's hand then, warming it under his fingers. Squeezed gently but firmly. "I wouldn't wanna be anywhere right now but here, with you," he murmured. "I asked _you_ to stay – not to get Hunk or Pidge or somebody. I didn't ask for Coran to monitor me overnight. You're the only one who could've gotten me through all of this. Thank you, Keith."

Keith swallowed thickly and finally looked at him again, eyes moist and so starkly violet, it took him aback. How beautiful Keith was, and how easily Lance seemed to forget that. "Me?" Keith whispered, voice rough with overwhelming emotion. Lance squeezed his hand again, daring a slight smile.

"Yeah, you," he said softly, threading their fingers together. "I mean it." Keith only gazed down at their joined hands, eyes tracing the lines of their linked fingers. He looked like he might have been trying not to cry again. Lance briefly wondered if this had been the best time of month to get sappy at him. "I tell everyone else I care about how much I appreciate them all the time, but I don't do that with you."

"I've kinda noticed," Keith corroborated, frowning. Lance tightened his hold on his fingers, halting his impulsive jerk away. He grimaced at Lance's stubbornness and then slid his eyes up to meet him. "I know you don't like me that much. It's fine." He shifted on the bed, drawing his knees higher and grunting at a throb of pain in his belly. "So what the hell are you doing now?"

Lance soothed his thumb over Keith's pensively. What he said next could make or break what happened today. So he took a few extra seconds and chose his words carefully. "You're more complicated than that," he mused aloud, briefly meeting Keith's eye. "Hunk and Pidge… they know what they're good at, they don't need any of my encouragement or affirmation, so I can kinda just say whatever." He turned their hands over, and traced the lines on Keith's palm; Keith shivered against him. His hands felt baby-soft despite his rugged looks and attitude. "You… feel everything so deeply. And you think about the things people say, and you remember. And I'm not used to any of that. 'It's just another empty compliment from Lance, he spits out dozens of those every day.'" He craned his head up toward Keith's. "I mean every one that I give, but you know all the stock phrases and you can see through the bullshit. I guess what I'm saying is, when I compliment you, I want to make it unique to you. I want to say it in a way that you'll believe me."

Keith stared, processing. Lance didn't have to try that hard for someone like him.

"And I do like you," he circled back, eyes glimmering. "I actually like you a lot. So it's even more difficult."

Keith felt the blush creep up his cheeks and turned away. Lance followed, shifting closer until he could rest his chin on Keith's shoulder, upper back warm where Lance leaned against it. "In a different way than you like Pidge and Hunk?" he checked, but the thrumming of Lance's heartbeat over his ribs should have been clarification enough.

"Yeah, kinda," Lance said, voice hushed and nervous. They locked eyes. "It took me a minute to figure out what it was. But I finally did."

Keith's face turned a deeper red. "When was that?"

Lance grinned. "That time you punched out Gideon for making fun of your mullet."

Keith balked, eyes wide. That was _years_ ago, he looked ready to say, but when he opened his mouth nothing came out.

As an afterthought, Lance added, "I didn't realize I wanted to kiss you until you drove us all off that cliff after saving Shiro, though."

Keith covered his face with his free hand, skin burning. Lance giggled and rested his head behind Keith's on the pillow, readjusting his grasp on his trembling hand.

"Why tell me all of this _now_ , Lance? Jesus Christ…" he did actually sound distressed and Lance squeezed his fingers to stand in as a hug.

"We've been through a lot today; I kinda figured, as long as we've already been vulnerable and we're fried as fuck, maybe I could admit all of this now and it'd be less weird."

Keith didn't say anything for a few minutes. "You really want to kiss me?" he said quietly into the room. Pulled his hand away. Looked out the corner of his eye at Lance. Lance nodded, closing his eyes and settling. Keith stared forward again, and Lance fell asleep.

–

Keith wasn't next to him anymore when Lance woke up, but upon opening his eyes he saw the Red Paladin sitting on the floor at his head, leaning against the wall and seemingly alert, though not very comfortable.

"How long have you been there?" Lance asked, voice rough from exhausted sleep. Keith craned over his shoulder.

"A bit. Needed to take care of something." Lanced noticed he was wearing different pants. He didn't look at the state of his sheets just then. But he imagined Keith would have tried to rouse him if anything so dramatic had happened.

"How do you feel?" Lance followed up. Keith quirked an eyebrow.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?"

Lance couldn't help an agreeable smile. "I don't have a major organ ripping itself apart." But he did slide a palm down the front of his stomach under the covers. The loose skin aside, he didn't feel anything so different from what he normally would have expected. "I'm okay, I think. I don't remember a lot right now." He shifted, and grit his teeth at an arrow of pain up his spinal column. "Still kinda sore."

Keith nodded mutely. Turned the rest of his body to the side. "I have drugs," he said, arm resting on the edge of the mattress. It felt strange to see him with bare hands, Lance reflected. Keith had taken his gloves off to help Lance deliver and had apparently neglected to recover them. His fingernails were bitten short, cuticles dry and a little ragged. Lance winced; he insisted on keeping his nails manicured and even. They were opposites in so many ways, and yet somehow Lance felt like he understood Keith almost better than he understood himself. He looked up to meet Keith's scrutinizing gaze, grateful again that Keith had agreed to stay with him overnight.

"Does anyone else know?" Lance whispered, amazed if this remained a secret between the both of them and Coran. Keith shrugged.

"Not from me." He thought for a beat. "Do you think any of them need to know?"

"Well, they might wonder why we have three dozen giant-ass larvae in the hospital bath tub."

Keith nodded his head. "Coran took care of that already, remember?" Lance blinked at him. Keith rolled his eyes. "They're alive, he sent them back to the Queen. She was very pleased at how big you got them."

Lance twisted his mouth and rolled away onto his back, knees up and arm draping over his eyes. "Are you telling me they weren't _supposed_ to get that huge?"

He heard the fabric of Keith's shirt rustle with his shrug. "That's all Coran had to tell me."

Groaning, Lance scrubbed a hand down his face. "The humiliation never ends." He turned his head to face Keith. "I don't want anyone else to know about this. Not now."

Understanding more than anyone else on this ship possibly could, Keith nodded firmly, the slightest smile daring to turn the ends of his mouth upward. He didn't have many people to share secrets with, and it was a certain level of trust he wasn't used to, to have someone believe he could keep one of theirs.

"There's something else I wanna say, that I need you not to tell anyone else," Keith responded in a hushed voice. He looked nervous all of a sudden, much like he had when he explained to Lance about Tyler. Lance turned his whole body to face him again and propped himself up a little on his elbow, making it clear that Keith had his full attention.

"I—" Keith cleared his throat, peering up at Lance through his lashes. "I kinda always wanted to kiss you, too."

Lance's jaw dropped and the scalding blush immediately raced up his neck and face, even burning in the back of his shoulders. _Oh, quiznak, I_ _**did** _ _tell him that!_ He worked on a response but everything blocked itself in his throat. The best he managed was a surprised squeak, as Keith reared up on his knees to eye level with him, still keeping distance but expression timidly inviting. No time like the present. He leaned the slightest bit closer, and Lance did too, before on a crazy leap of faith Keith closed the distance in one smooth arc and pressed his mouth to Lance's, breath warm and stuttering with nerves as their lips melded together. Lance hummed into the kiss, eyes drifting closed as Keith applied more pressure, crawling up on the bed and gently pushing Lance down. They landed, Lance on his back and Keith straddling his hips, his body so warm and his mouth so soft, hair like silk between Lance's fingers when he carded his hands through the jet black strands.

"Oh, fuck," Lance breathed, heat building and pooling in his groin when Keith's pelvis rocked over him.

"You okay?" Keith whispered, hand caressing his cheek. The tender gesture so unexpected Lance wondered if he would cry. "Sore?" he prompted; Lance must have winced.

"A little," he admitted. He drew his knees up to check Keith from retreating. "It's fine. Really."

Keith gnawed his lip, doubtful. His hands drifted to rest on his thighs as he sat back up, regarding Lance with some turbulent hesitation. His face had flushed in sort of a pretty way, and he nervously plucked the front of his shirt in a token but pitiful attempt to disguise any hints of arousal.

"You want to?" Lance spoke quietly into the heavy silence of the room, stating the undeniable fact more than asking a dangerous question. Still pulling his shirt away from his chest, Keith licked his lips and bit them again.

"We shouldn't," he confessed, eyes trailing down Lance's body toward his own signs of interest. His face twisted toward nausea and his brows creased.

"I don't mind that you're bleeding," Lance assured him, "I'm just worried it'll hurt you too much."

"It's not that," Keith rebuked, although Lance suspected he hadn't exactly been wrong.

"Then what is it?" Was Keith still not over Shiro? Or was there something else Keith had kept to himself?

Keith pushed his fingers in his hair, combing the thick strands back. It felt strange to see his forehead. He sighed out a rush of air, averting his eyes.

"Can I kiss you again?" Lance offered, pulling Keith back to the present. Keith huffed, corner of his mouth ticking upward.

"I'm trying to think about how I should say this," he mused, voice quavering slightly. "I haven't… with anyone. Since the time that I got pregnant. And I know it's not likely to happen right now, but… It. It stops me every time I think I want to, and, I. It's a lot. To deal with." A tear leaked from the corner of his eye and he fixed his gaze on the far wall, trying to stem the flow of tears. "I don't want to deal with that again – what do I do if I get pregnant again? Shiro… Shiro, he'd be so _disappointed_ in me, and I'd never be able to tell him about-- about Tyler. I can't. But it doesn't seem right to keep all that from him, either."

Lance listened, hand resting carefully on Keith's knee while he processed aloud.

"I know if we use protection and everything it should be okay, even if I wasn't on my period, but…" he shook his head in frustration at himself, eyes closed hopelessly. Lance squeezed his fingers tenderly.

"We don't need to do anything right now," he reassured him. "You're not ready, and that's okay for me. We'll wait until you are."

Keith's watery eyes made Lance wish they could go all the way if only to make it so Keith never had to look at him with that sorrowful face again. But he said nothing, knew it wouldn't help, just stroked his hand over Keith's arm to beckon him closer again, until Keith rested himself flat over the plane of Lance's torso, nerves seeping out of him the longer Lance draped his fingers across his tensed muscles. He kissed Keith's temple, drawing his knee up again to sort of secure him in place. Keith faced away, but he curled his hands over Lance's shoulders, their heartbeats falling in step as Keith's slowed down. He sniffled once or twice, but especially after Lance pulled the blanket over them he seemed to calm down and relax. He still shifted now and then, jaw working.

"Tummy okay?"

"Mmf."

Lance huffed a little, turning them onto their sides so it might feel more comfortable for Keith's sore cramping belly. Keith tucked his face under Lance's chin wordlessly, and Lance made sure the blanket completely covered them both.

He couldn't be sure how long they'd slept, but in their joined slumber Keith had entangled himself with Lance, clinging around his limbs and dead to the world the longer Lance tried to rouse him.

"Keith. Keith, come on buddy," he coaxed, gently shaking his shoulder. "Come on, mullet-head, my arm's numb."

"Mmf," finally sounded drowsily out of Keith's throat, although he still showed no signs of alertness. More like, he sighed in his sleep and actually cuddled _closer_ against Lance's body, grasp around his chest tightening and face burrowing deeper into Lance's neck.

Who would believe that _Keith_ of all people would be a cuddler? Lance took a moment to process this staggering realization, then sighed through his nose and relaxed. This was actually kinda nice. Having Keith next to him. So he didn't have to wake up alone. Lance craned his neck to watch Keith's sleeping face for a while. He looked younger, almost cherubic. His long, thick lashes fanned over his cheeks and his breath came in little kitten-soft puffs against Lance's neck. Sometimes the tiniest whistling snore played across his throat and Lance couldn't help an endeared smile. He checked the lay of the blanket, ensuring Keith remained covered and warm, and turned in his clasping arms so they lay facing each other. Then they could hold each other closer. Keith sighed again and one of his legs slotted between Lance's thighs, almost to his hips. Lance froze for a few seconds, worried for a moment that Keith had awakened, but the Red Paladin remained limp and senseless when he experimentally shifted his top leg off, so perhaps Keith had merely been seeking closeness in his unconscious state, not really aware of where his limbs landed.

"Keith?" Lance tried again anyway, softly. No response. He smiled. He would let Keith sleep. After all, he was tired, too.

–

As long as he lived Lance believed he would never fully comprehend how his three-day ordeal never left the confidence of himself, Keith, and Coran. Sometimes he wondered if something had slipped to Allura's ears as she seemed to suddenly be more cautious or protective of him, but when Keith mentioned offhand she was rather terrible at keeping secrets, Lance was forced to dismiss it as her normal guardian-like tendencies toward all of the team. If she couldn't protect a kingdom, she would protect her Paladins.

The lingering aches in his body subsided. The angry red marks along his belly faded to a silvery purple and the crepe paper skin smoothed with daily application of a healing salve he had scavenged from the medical supplies. His tummy would never quite look the same again, he took a long time and a lot of humbling to accept. Keith helped him a lot with that during the following months. It culminated in a moment of rare vulnerability (after a solid liter of nunville each) he had held up his shirt to the hem of his binder, allowing Lance to see where his own body would find itself after only a year had passed.

"It's not that bad," he had mused aloud, as much to comfort himself as to reassure Keith that their bodies were still okay. Keith wouldn't allow him to touch his bare skin, but he looked the tiniest bit more content when he dropped his shirt hem, eyes luminous in a different sort of way when Lance straightened and leading the kiss rather than waiting for Lance to come to him.

"Speak for yourself," he'd murmured into Lance's mouth, just to be contrary as his hands were not irritated but curious, wandering lower down Lance's body to his slim waistline and hips, fingers flattening over the tight denim and guiding their bodies closer.

"We shouldn't," Lance whispered when his brain caught up with the hot blood shooting lower. "Babe, we're drunk."

"I want to," Keith hummed, mouth against his and fingers dipping under his boxers.

"Keith," Lance insisted, hand clasping over his wrist, "I don't have any condoms. Please."

Keith paused at that. His hand did not withdraw. He frowned. "I want you," he breathed, voice tremulous like he would cry.

"I don't wanna hurt you," Lance assured him, brushing his hair back. Keith gazed up at him. "I know you don't wanna get pregnant again. I can't prevent that right now."

Keith shuttered his eyes, processing. The flush to his cheeks made him look so much younger. Too young for all of this, Lance thought. "No one's ever said anything like that to me," he admitted, sounding like he'd been asleep for years and only just woke out of a badly distorted dream.

Lance's heart broke. He could only imagine how difficult it was for Keith to find any partner he felt safe with in the first place – to then bear the burden of protecting himself from getting pregnant by himself on top of that, felt completely unfair. In this day and age it still fell solely on the one who could conceive, to take pains against that happening. "Then let me say it again: I don't want to risk getting you pregnant, for as long as _you_ don't want to get pregnant. It's _my_ fault if it happens, okay?"

Keith pursed his lips, fingers curled in Lance's shirt front. He beat his hand ineffectively against Lance's chest. "I still want to." Lance rested his forehead on Keith's.

"We're drunk, babe. Let's wait." He kissed his lips in apology, pulling their bodies together for that closeness Keith craved. "Let me get condoms before we do anything," he added quietly, prying Keith's wandering hand from his hip and kissing the heated fingertips. God, he wanted Keith at least as badly as Keith wanted him, but this would risk too much right now. It would be worth the wait. It would be worth protecting Keith's heart, protecting Keith's body.

"Can we sleep together, at least?" Keith murmured. "I mean--"

"I got it," Lance reassured him."Yeah, I'd like that." _I love you_ , he wanted to say, but it felt too soon, too impulsive. He kissed Keith again. This, right here and right now, this was all he'd wanted this entire time, he realized. This was enough.

This was perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> Long version: So my friendo made Klance with trans!Keith in the Sims, and soon after Keith had their first daughter Lance got abducted and came back alien-pregnant with twin girls. I proposed writing this because I am that friend who will torture your fave as a deeply questionable expression of love. Also I wanted a break from my other projects. And also, most importantly, I am a Horrible Person.
> 
> Also can someone explain the thing in fic with bee/wasp aliens because I swear I thought of it on my own? Is there some sort of cultural osmosis I'm missing out on? Or is it "Bee Movie"'s fault?
> 
> (KIDDING)
> 
> ((but seriously is it??))
> 
> Thank you for reading, I guess?????
> 
> (Haters move along, please. I am ENTIRELY AWARE of how nasty this is. There is a reality where this fic never happened, I'm just sorry it isn't this one.)
> 
> (I'm gonna go write something nauseatingly wholesome in an attempt to rebalance the universe, now.)


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